Let’s curb all this “Detroit ruins porn.” It’s not Chernobyl. New trend! Instead of passing the “porn,” pass this on: “Detroiters are living it and they are surviving it.”
Matthew Barney is currently shooting “Kuh,” part two of his new seven-part cycle of films, in Detroit. Like The Cremaster Cycle, it sounds stunning in grandeur – somewhere a “murdered” a 1967 Chrysler Crown Imperial is exhumed and metal is melted to fanfare. Because one man’s socio-economic disaster is another man’s video-art backdrop.
Banksy’s Tweety Bird For Sale on eBay
Another alleged Banksy from Detroit’s Packard Plant has been chiseled out of the rubble and is now being peddled out on eBay. Banksy showed off the caged canary himself, but will it sell without official authentication? The starting bid for the 1,800 pound site-specific, site-less “art wall” is $75,000. The Bansky poachers left a gaping hole in the ruins, but I tawt I taw a puddy tat response that’s pretty amusing.
Apparently, foreclosed-real-estate looters tend to “avoid funky and arty” homes. Artist Mitch Cope and architect Gina Reichert garland abandoned houses with stripes, jam windows with painted cones and trade boarded-up doors for rock sculpture blockades to discourage break-ins. The “bizarre sculptural” defense is now on view at MOCA Detroit, in case you need an alternative to ruins porn.
Owners of Packard Motor Car Co. plant remnants are suing 555 Nonprofit Gallery for the Banksy mural that the gallery towed and hid. The ownership of said plant has been in dispute for years, but some rep of Bioresource Inc. is claiming dibs on what they think is a $100,000 art work. The “plaintiff” was asking for his eight-foot cinderblock back, but the gallery has been ignoring him. Read more »
After a few threatening phone calls, emails and “internet chatter,” 555 Nonprofit Gallery decided to hide that giant cinder-block wall they lifted out of context from a dilapidated Detroit plant. To save Banksy’s piece from “certain destruction” by vandals, it’s no longer on view. The plant’s ownership is in legal dispute, but the gallery found some scapegoat foreman who, presumably, let them claim finders-keepers. Long story short, someone in charge found out there’s money to be made. The gallery is currently appraising the piece so its “owner” can claim it as a tax-deductible donation on his taxes.
Banksy’s recent “I remember when all this was trees” piece in Detroit has been removed. Immediately after noticing the street art, the 555 Nonprofit Gallery and Studios descended into the crumbled Packard plant area, dug out the wall in two days and moved it via forklift to their gallery space. Whether or not they’re “thieves” or “stewards,” they’re definitely silly. This is one of Banksy’s more site-specific works. They might be “preserving” a brick wall or its price tag, but probably not the piece as it was meant to be. |Freep|
Banksy in Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco and Toronto
Of all the said Banksys popping up nationwide lately, Banksy has confirmed a few, including the Battleship Potemkin stroller in Chicago, “I remember when all this was trees” in Detroit, the sunbathing Osama in San Francisco and “You concrete me.” A few more pieces were spotted in Detroit and Toronto. See the recent confirmed and yet-to-be confirmed Banksys below. Read more »
Artists Make Statement About Icicles, Housing Crisis
Things may be bad for the rest of the country, but they’re really bad in Detroit. The once flourishing city that gave America generations of gas guzzlers and Motown is a shell of its former self. To highlight the “current freeze in the housing market” and Detroit “leading the nation in foreclosures,” a photographer and an architect collaborated on “Ice House.” Read more »
Because most of the city’s residents and local government have no money and are unable to afford the $695 cost of individual cremation, frozen corpses, 67 of them, are piling up inside the Wayne County morgue. Even the dead in the dying city of Detroit can’t seem to catch a break. |CNN|
Editor-in-Chief:
