The Yes Men: new action today

You remember the fake New York Times that was distributed last November announcing the end of the Iraq war? Well, there is a fake International Herald Tribune being circulated today, in an action by Greenpeace, which is being released in advance of the Copenhagen summit on December 19 2009. In it, EU leaders thank the European public for having engaged in months of civil disobedience leading up to the Copenhagen climate conference that will be held this December. "It was only thanks to your massive pressure over the past six months that we could so dramatically shift our climate-change policies.... To those who were arrested, we thank you."

The Yes Men have supported a website which is urging non-violent civil disobedience in confronting climate change in the face of reluctant bureaucrats and politicians.

From a press release sent out today:

"Non-violent civil disobedience has been at the forefront of almost
every successful campaign for change," said Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes
Men, who helped write and edit the newspaper and are furnishing the
technology for BeyondTalk.net. "Especially in America, and especially
today, we need to push our leaders hard to stand up to industry
lobbyists and make the sorts of changes we need."

You can get the horoscopes here.

Where's that bloody Chinese Flyin' 'orse, then?

Pete n Dud talk about art.

Alternative Miss World

What a terribly lovely thing for a rainy saturday evening. (video)

An art career is born: toilets and taoiseachs

If they won't hang your paintings, just paint something eye grabbing, topical and political and guerilla hang it in the Royal Hibernian Academy and the National Gallery yourself instead. The hell with it, paint the prime minister naked on the toilet. And make it topical. Toilets and Taoiseachs. Get the media involved.

Get the police involved. Ooooooooh. Delicious. Delicious. The POLICE are hot on the tail of this artist.

Jay Jopling is surely not far behind.

UPDATE: RTE, our national broadcaster, today apologised for covering this topic of power, politics, nudity and alleged crime, in the main evening news, as a result of a complaint from the office of the Taoiseach, who considered the story irrelevant. Yeah, I mean, who could think such a story remotely interesting to the populace (especially in this economic and political climate)? I wonder if the office of the Taoiseach would recognise a newsworthy story if it bit them on the arse on the bog and painted them?

Rothko transubstantiates in my room

I have come to London to see a Rothko show. While I am here, I will do lots of other things also. It is getting interesting.

This evening, my first full day here, I returned from the loo to see my water bottle on the floor, seeping water, in this peculiar - there's no way around this but through - maroon Rothko like form. The floor here is maroon, it just is. The floor is a Rothko-like maroon, to begin with. Now, with a dark form in the middle of it, reminding me of the purpose of my visit.

I had no previous knowledge of the colour of the carpet in this place, and I bought that water with a full intention to drink it. It's thirsty work spending hours in the tube, circling between King's Cross and Moorgate, trying to find a functioning Metropolitan line on the weekend, and thus missing the Complicite show that is probably a thing of Greatness. You need water for all that.

Universe had other ideas.

Rothko lives! But yes, I am looking forward to reuniting with those paintings (and new ones! ones I have never ever ever seen before! hurrah!) tomorrow evening.

Gosh, this article is very interesting.

This is Where: Milla

Milla from THIS IS WHERE from Lucy Foley on Vimeo.

This and yesterday's post are two parts of a project I made this year, called This is Where. It's composed of mostly film photographs but also some digital, spoken word and the music for both pieces is composed by Ross Bonadonna. It is made to be projected on large canvases in installation settings. This is Where was first seen at the Enniskillen Arts Festival, Sept/Oct 08.

Here is ... This is Where

Finally, my two still movies, Milla and Rose from the This is Where series, are online.

This is what they look like.

(Also viewable on the vimeo page, where they are a bit larger. Bear in mind that these works are intended for large sized projected installations. Feel free to purchase a dvd where you can view them in the comfort of your own sofa, on your lovely flatscreen telly.)

Show news!

I have a number of posts in various states of undress, but today I am up to my goolies in trying to find a dvd burner that is compatible with apple, and that can also be shipped to me by tuesday (or in-person pickupable in Dublin or London over the next couple of weeks. This is proving more tricky than you might think.)

Meanwhile, show news! I will be performing my one minute one woman show, Ode to a Daisy, as part of the Project Brand New's Magic Moments series in the Dublin Fringe Festival on Wednesday, September 17th! The time is 3 pm, the place is the Fringe Festival Offices, on Sackville Place. I would be delighted to see you, and have you see me.

Other show news: I have a couple of still movies showing at the Enniskillen Arts Festival, from the 26th September to the 5th October in the foyer of the Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. My movies are Rose and Milla from my "This is Where" series of still live movies. They will be live on my site within the next couple of weeks. I'm really excited to be showing at the Portora school: it is an old private boys school that is celebrating its quatercentenary this year (ie. 400 years old!). Oscar Wilde and Sam Beckett both went there. My work will be projected in the foyer! This is seriously thrilling. There are lots of cool gigs and stuff happening in Portora over the course of the festival, Eliza Carthy and Andy Irvine are both playing there, so lots of people will be milling through. Come on up!

Some photos of that day

I'm treating this site as a blog. The photographer seems to be called Hugh Crawford, though it's not a big professional/ self-promotional joint. It's an archive of a man's daily adventures with Polaroid, and I'm really enjoying the old-school site layout. It's actually the best of what a basic website can be, no frills but also no bullshit. Beautifully curated and constructed. The pictures themselves are deeply evocative and rich of the life, the place, the time. So far I'm up to December 1983. It's gorgeous.

For the New Yorkers

... there's this guy. For everybody else, go to New York, email that guy, he'll come and draw you.

We boogie whether weather

Milan rain. Barcelona rain. It's all wet. Art.

Art Under the Bridge

I have just come back from Dumbo, hanging out on the street with whoever the hell I met, and making impromptu art installations on the hoof and having a gorgeous conversation at the end on a grassed-over sidewalk right on the edge of Brooklyn.

Dumbo is right up the arse of Manhattan. It's an interesting neighbourhood. This weekend is open house in all the studios. Art festival. You can feel the edge of money meeting art. Razor, that one. I wasn't long there but I found some amazing places, good places. I fell in love again, with a neighbourhood. Just hung out and goofed off, talkin, talkin, writin. I was off the train about five minutes and dancing to Stevie Wonder on my iPod at full tilt volume, when I got to the bridge.

Took out my earphones and felt the rhythm of the train screech sixty feet above. It's a magnificent architecture. The whole neighbourhood is magnificent looking, in a totally different style to Prospect Heights. I think that shift alone was really refreshing, but then suddenly I found myself upstairs in a loft grooving to some rocknroll for a tune, and then standing out in a vacant space that reminded me of A-huset, the multi-artist warehouse megablock I lived in for a year in Koebenhavn.

Three boys were standin there, smoking a grass joint rolled in a cigar tobacco leaf. They called me over and we jived for 20 minutes or so. It was intense. One of them did kung fu to show off a bit, and he was really very good at the kung fu, but it was also a bit bizarre. They were turbo-smart kinds of boys, artists, full of money and high ideas, highly testosterised and American and young. I haven't actually been around that kind of men in a long time. Or maybe ever, really. I've been hanging out with middle aged guys lately, actually. And enjoying it a lot. Not old farts, divorced from life, but relaxed people right in the groove of life, at a different stage of it to me. So this was a totally different energy. Incredibly intense. Wild horses of men, these young ones, using their concepts and their arguments like upscale cheap come-ons. Fun.

So I was on my way to a party I never got to. There was a Prospect Heights crowd having a party there, but I had my hands full on the street.

I found a gorgeous spot under one of the arches of the bridge, and a spontaneous wolf call came out of me really fast. It was gorgeous to hear that echo. It's all blocked off with hoardings so you've really got to shout up into it. Everything you've got, you can offer to the arch under the Manhattan bridge and get cleaned of your sins. It was like church. There were two totally hip gorgeous party kids pissing in a corner and when they heard me they just came running. We had such fun. Pigs in muck. Fab.

Their boyfriends came to piss in the corner of the arch and I took pictures. One of them ran away fast. He used to curate the Brooklyn Museum, apparently. Another one was an incredibly styled punk, with diamante studded belts and various shades of soft toned hair, a kind of rhinestone cowboy punk. These people were gorgeous.

If Gwen Stefani had any sense, she'd look like you, I told the Venezuelan gal. She was a lot in the Gwen Stefani look, but totally hip with it. The other one was a gorgeous little sailor boy with a silver heart on a chain who had rips in his black jeans right up his arse.

We were incandescent, stood there calling whatever the hell came to us. Some fun ones. You know the Scooby Doo - "ya da da da da daaa! Puppy Power!" ? Yeah. And The Police's Roxanne. We all joined in on that one. Confessions came out really fast, too.

I confessed that I had once lived in a tent with a woman for two years. This place was like a wishing well, it was like the porthole of the universe right there on the absolute borderline between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Then we did the can can and laughed our arses off. The little sailor boy kept jumping up and down saying "yay! we're liberated! we're liberated!". The more classy society folks standing around stared at us like crack had just hit the neighbourhood.

I gave them two of my new batch of visiting cards and we parted ways.. I think I'm going to hang out there tomorrow from late afternoon, with a notebook and a visitors' guest book and camera and make sounds and see what happens in that arch under the Manhattan bridge, so if you read this in time and you're nearby and you're in the mood for some fun, come by and hang out. Introduce yourself, if I don't know you already. I'd love to meet you if you're reading.

And then I met Luisa. She's a film artist who's showing her work projected out on the water in the Brooklyn Bridge Park between the two bridges, this weekend. We found a grassed over sidewalk, kicked our shoes off, hung out on the grass and talked our arses off. I've made a new friend. She rocks.

Anyway, everybody being beautiful and all, I spotted a group sitting out in front of a warehouse and something in the style of their pose reminded me of an ad campaign and I said to Luisa, Calvin Klein. And wondered out loud, I wonder if I'm going to move here and become an advertising whore? Who knows? I really don't think so, I've got other fish to fry, but things move fast over here. The borderlines between art and money felt much fuzzier there than anywhere else I've ever been.

There is interesting shit happening in Dumbo, folks. Art reviews on the way, for a quieter moment.