ZERO DOLLAR PROJECT

• 2011-01-12

  open zero hours

  Our show is opened 11th-16th of jan (am sitting here right now) 12-5pm everyday at the WestSpace’s The West Wing- located in Melbourne Central on level 2 next to Gloria Jeans. Also come to the closing party 4-6pm Sunday 16th Jan!

• 2011-01-07

  Introduction to a Recreation of the Melbourne Central Shopping Complex

  

  When beginning work on this project I wanted to do something which looked at the site of The Westwing, the Melbourne Central shopping complex. The theme of the show “zero dollars” seemed to be such a great contrast with an internationally financed mall and entertainment complex.

  I also got to thinking about MP3s and how they’re free and how they’ve changed the way I access information and the amount of information I access. I seem to be constantly listening to podcasts wherever I am and it builds these informational associations with different places. There’s a corner of the park I associate with the Global Economic Crisis now.

  So I knew from early on I was going to make an audio tour of the complex. The content is more slippery I guess the atmosphere of malls are pretty unreal, especially this one with its animatronic fob watch and 19^th century shot tower in the middle of the arcade, so I wrote a fantasy about the space.

  The work takes the form of an introduction to a virtual (or equivalent) recreation of the mall, and the idea is that you should listen to it whilst in the space. I have always read sci-fi and now since been introduced to the idea of the technological singularity I have been obsessing over the future but can’t decide whose side I fall on Kurzweil’s or Kaczynski’s. Anyway the piece deals with the future of capitalism, and what could be more central to an exhibition with the word “dollar” in the title?, and of course I offer my work here free of charge.

  Introduction to a Recreation of the Melbourne Central Shopping Complex 

  right click& save as…..

  Thanks to Greg Wadley Research Fellow in computer science at the University of Melbourne who narrated the piece, I chose him because of his work with second life.

• →

  Artists who steal.

  There are certain skills required for stealing:  bravado, cunning and quick hands. There are also a variety of reasons why a person might steal: out of necessity, politically-motivated (e.g. anti-corporation), psychologically-based (e.g. kleptomania) or, simply, driven by greed. No matter the aptitude or intention, anyone who has tried it knows the satisfaction that comes from getting something for nothing.

  The field of art has a special relationship with the notion of theft. For example, there are many famous cases of art heists, such as the mysterious robbery of Picasso’s Weeping Woman from the NGV in 1985; while appropriation artists, such as Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons, have invariably encountered issues of copyright infringement.

  

  There are also many interesting cases of artists engaging with the act of stealing to create work. What follows is a brief – and by no means complete - history of artists who steal.

  1. Violations: Evidence of 153 Misdemeanours on Violation of Section 484 of the California Penal Code (Petty Theft) 1971 – 1972 by Dennis Oppenheim

  For an exhibition at the Sonnabend Gallery, New York, in 1972, Dennis Oppenheim mounted a monitor high in the gallery which played a repeating sequence of a hand clasping a screwdriver and levering a hubcap from a car wheel. As acknowledged in the work’s subtitle, Oppenheim’s action was undertaken illegally. The stolen hubcaps scattered gallery floor and served as material evidence of the artist’s feat.

  When later asked what his impetus was for indulging in such misdemeanours, Dennis Oppenheim replied ‘I was looking for ways of changing an object simply by touching it. This is about economy of gesture. By simply touching something you can change it.’ 

  2. Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst (There is a Criminal Touch to Art) 1976 by Ulay

  In 1976 Frank Uwe Laysiepen (otherwise known as Ulay) entered the Neue National, Berlin, and proceeded directly to the painting The Poor Poet by Carl Spitzweg (1836). Ulay clipped the wires from which it hung, clasped it under his arm and moved quickly to the exit. After narrowly evading security guards in pursuit, Ulay drove the painting to the home of a local Turkish immigrant family where he hung Der Arme Poet above their mantelpiece. Ulay then returned to the street and called the Director of Neue in order to invite him to view the painting in its new location.

  For Ulay, stealing the painting served as an important socio-political action. He saw a marked contrast between Spitzweg’s romantic vision of Berlin and the city’s current state; which at that time was the epicentre of the Cold War. Ulay believed that displacing the inappropriate painting and resituating it in the living quarters of an underprivileged Turkish foreign worker family may have a positive social impact.

  

  3. Stealing at the Summer End Sale 1978 by Ann Messner

  In the film Stealing at the Summer End Sale Ann Messner appears in a department store in Cologne, Germany, piling on layers of t-shirts and stuffing more into plastic shopping bags. As Messner frantically - and openly - shoplifts, the film captures the oblique glances and bemusement of her fellow shoppers.

  This work is indicative of Messner’s artistic approach, where she regularly exaggerates or mimics ‘normal’ social behaviours in order to reorient and self-consciously critique the original act. 

  4. A Proposito… (Incidentally) 1996 by Miguel Calderón and Yoshua Okon

  In 1997 Miguel Calderon and Yoshua Okon exhibited a grid-like stack of 120 stolen car stereos on the gallery floor of La Panaderia, Mexico city; upon the wall a looped video projection showed the artists smashing a car window and wrestling the stereo from the dashboard. While 119 of the stereos were acquired on the local black market, the video footage accurately captured Calderon and Okon’s own foray into petty theft. 

  On stealing the car radio, Calderon recalled:

  ‘After a failed attempt I managed to break the glass and get it, however I left the hammer in the car, and after doing it we both experienced a huge adrenalin rush, which in a way did make us understand why people did it again and again.’

  

  5. Recent Acquisitions 2002 by Dane Mitchell

  In 2002 Dane Mitchell created a work utilising plundered waste from the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. The sensitive documents he found, including budgetary material, were to be exhibited as an installation at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces. At the last moment the then director, Max Delany, requested that the work not be shown.

  In place of the pilfered waste, Mitchell framed and hung a letter from the then chairman of ACCA, Steven M. Skala, requesting ‘that the documents, miscellanea and materials be either returned to ACCA or destroyed in the presence of the director of your host organisation. I also ask for confirmation that you will attend to this matter as soon as is practicable and if you choose to destroy the documents, miscellanea and materials, confirmation that this has been done.”

  6. As Is 2005 by Pat Foster and Kain Picken

   For a collaborative project at CLUBSproject Inc., Melbourne, Pat Foster and Kain Picken acquired their materials by less than honourable methods from the international furniture chain, IKEA. Using a black felt tip marker, Picken and Foster re-priced and purchased items at a reduced cost under the pretext that they were damaged or remainder goods. Once transferred to the gallery site, the assorted household items were presented as an ad-hoc shop display, with desks, folded mattresses and lamps scattered half-heartedly across the floor and walls.

  The act of re-pricing meant Foster and Picken could autonomously decide upon the objects’ monetary value, thereby enacting a re-negotiation of the customer’s power, privileging the buyer. Unlike traditional capitalist systems of exchange, the artists’ deception cleverly revealed a way for the consumer to gain control of and speak through the otherwise indiscriminate merchandise.

  - Patrice Sharkey

• 2010-12-27

  Melbourne Central.

• →

  I made a couple of trips to Melbourne Central over this past fortnight, to have a look at the space. It’s an interesting place, perhaps the best location for Zero. The Christmas sales seem to intensify the whole experience even further.

  I couldn’t help but notice all the birds trapped inside the mall. Prominently sparrows and pigeons, they’re everywhere.  I wondered whether the birds can survive inside (there were quite a few in the food court) or whether they slowly die of starvation?

  In a store on level 1 I found a pair of jeans with an image of a bird sewn into the back pocket.

  On one of the subterranean levels Trish found a sign that said:

  Please use the lift between dreams and fossil.

  Charlie.
  

• 2010-12-26

  write something for $0 exhibition…

  writers have no costs, art is making something useless and making it worth money: but what about the work that you make that no one wants? the work that costs money and is worth nothing? the weird desperate things that you do when you’re poor and in berlin and it’s the middle of winter? how much is the right amount to spend on materials that we will l8r destroy? selling art outside Mauer Park markets, anyone? stealing Kryolan stage make-up from a party because you think it’s watercolour paint? grinding crayons down to a nub. -holly

• 2010-12-23

  Helen Hughes talks to Thomas Jeppe

  

  HH: To set the scene — you’ve got heaps of tats. In 2006, you edited a photographic anthology of home made tattoos (Home Made Tattoos Rule, Serps Press) and you are currently working on another called Old Men’s Tattoos, which will be published by Dokument Press from Sweden and released in 2011. You have also recently been immortalised by the lyrics of Matthew Griffin (Thomas with the tatts/ uses the barter system/ he doesn’t have to pay no one/ he just has to ink ’em/ he doesn’t pay no tax/ there ain’t no G.S.T./ he gives you something you might regret/ for something that he needs) for using your home made tattoos as an alternative form of remuneration.

   

  What do you personally find important or interesting about tattoos? And what’s the best thing you’ve got out of this tattoo exchange?

   

  TJ: Tattoos are interesting when they’re treated frivolously.  Spontaneity is a good antidote to the associated gravitas of tattooing’s permanence.  For this reason, I like and continue to make home made tattoos, which abolish just about all the conventions and pretensions of tattooing as a process: booking, waiting, paying; financial imperatives; quality control; professionalism; competition. These aspects can be bypassed — they should not be seen as the rigid conditions you must work within if you want to have a picture on your skin.  

   

  I couldn’t say what the best swap I’ve made is, but there have been several good ones.  I swapped tattoos of a splashing goblet and a candle burning at both ends for accommodation in New York and Stockholm respectively; several tattoos have been traded for rare books and records; I tattooed a kite in exchange for my girlfriend’s haircut; a spinning wheel in exchange for a professional bike service; an eagle reading “Danger Bird Flys Alone” for an eagle artwork (a trade which happened in Germany, which was thematically important).

   

  HH: I guess you could think of your tattoos as undoing the work of X de Medici, where she iterates that heaviness associated with tattoos by transforming them into intricate still lives or memento moris that are then framed and hung on the wall.

   

  TJ: Yes, in a way, this approach is anti-precious, and as such, very different to that of X de Medici.  But the comparison also underscores the disparity between these two paths: home mades are definitely not an art form. 

   

  HH: The eagle trade. Did you tattoo Lane?

   

  TJ: Yes, the eagle for eagle trade was with Lane.

  

  HH: I’m thinking of all those different sorts of prison tattoo taxonomies — like rose petals and tear drops. As far as I understand, these markers denote measuring systems for different crimes/doing time. Would you say your tattoos are a measure of anything in particular? Do they literally map an alternative economy for you, or do they rather plot a series of connections that you’ve had with different people during your travels?

   

  TJ: I try to take photos of all the tattoos I make, so the collected documentation ends up forming some sort of map over time, but that is perhaps the extent of their symbolism — they are concrete references.  

   

  Thinking about this reminds me of why I like tribal tattoos now.  Their primary function is to say “I have a tattoo”; they cannot have a more important message.  I am of course referring to the “Western tribal”, not the traditional (i.e. actual) tribal.  Plus, this bluntness comes on the back of the strained or failed pretension of ‘getting in touch with the primitive’ that is the backstory of the aesthetic.  Once this farce melted, it’s just a ‘nice design’.  What an apt analogy for the course of tattooing itself.  

   

  HH: That’s curious. I remember when I was in Papua New Guinea about 7 years ago, I found the tattoo culture there really interesting. For instance I travelled to Boga Boga, a coastal town near the eastern tip, and encountered all these young teenage girls — like 13 and 14 years old — with their really ’60s-style western names like “Lorna” (which had probably trickled down from the Missionary set up in Milne Bay) tattooed down their forearms. I’ve always found it a really abstract gesture to tattoo your own name on yourself. In this case it was like the tattoos had completed a full cycle like the failed one you mentioned just now. There was a definite imbrication of the long history of tribal tattooing in PNG with the more recent western influence, but the dissimilarities were not as huge as you might expect. There was a shared immediacy or autonomy.

   

  TJ: Sounds like your PNG experience saw another twist on cargo-cultism, in perhaps its most cyclical form.  I recently finished editing on a book called Old Men’s Tattoos, which includes a historical overview tracing the early paths of Western tattooing, particularly the point where it constituted European sailors taking on Pacific Islander techniques with Western text and symbology.  This was the mid-late 1700s, and tattoo designs stayed pretty much exactly the same until the early 1900s (very early examples attached).  To my mind, the really dramatic rupture in Western tattooing happened in the late 1960s through the 1970s, when tribal designs began to undergo a popular revival — the cycle you saw in PNG, reversed from the other side.The (post-) economical aspects are an incidental element of this all.  The practical and desirous impetus came first; the thought that it could become a tradable service/favour followed.  Not so different from any other trade, except for the fact that with home mades, nothing ends up repaired.

   

  HH: Yeah I was going to say ‘post economy’, a term that has been used to describe your system, is kind of a weird and fuzzy one. Maybe ill-fitting since your trading scheme doesn’t fully replace a capitalist free market, but it does take the cash out of it.

   

  This made me think of an artwork Simon Taylor made last year loosely based on the “sea-grade” Kevin Costner film Waterworld. In this work, he presented two collages made from air travel documents accompanied by one of those pouches you get on long airplane flights. This one was a Qatar Air pouch. Simon was thinking about travel and piracy (mainly downloading audio-visual files from the internet) and the economy of exchange (when money was useless in the post-apocalyptic seascape of Kostner’s character in Waterworld). Thinking of the shifting economy of the internet, where people are willing to buy memberships to exclusive (but free) movie downloading sites or pay real money for * conceptual * credit points or lifestyle accoutrements in avatar games like Second Life, he was prompting viewers to think about what they’d take to barter with if they were faced with the prospect of water world doom… i.e. a post-cash economy.

   

  So, what else might you take (besides your ink)?

   

  TJ: “Post-economy” is fraught, I agree.  But perhaps, even further than the Waterworld post-cash economy, the term finds some grounding in home made trades, in that there is no ‘evaluation’ going on.  There is no continuum of value for a tattoo (i.e., 30 minutes of work has no consistent trade worth), and the things I’ve received in exchange have no sense-making comparative value.  So the exchange forms as “a thing for a thing”, being so far past (or pre-) contemporary economic structures that post-economy begins to feel a suitable term.  

   

  As for desert island necessities, talk about parents telling their artist children to have a trade to fall back on… I’d say a carpenter’s toolbox would be top of the list, right? Or portable DVD player with Kostner box set?

   

  HH: Ha ha ha. Maybe just download them

  
  

• 2010-12-16

  

  Two weeks ago I walked along this big blue circle. I like how zeros are also circles. To make a circle you start at one point, head out on a constant curve until you return to the beginning again. This is what zero is, I think. It’s a big something that amounts to nothing.
  
  So I took this walk from my studio and walked right around it in 40 minutes. The real loop is jagged and imperfect. There’s nothing else to say about it, I didn’t have a revelation. I left and returned.

  Zero is a real relief, because everything else is either positive or negative. Zero is not anxious or ambitious. Zero is not a pre-christmas sale.
  
  Most days I ride or walk to the studio from my house; making a loop, a circle and a zero. It’s a constant. It’s an elastic measurement of time, it expands and retracts quite easily. Zero is everyday and beautiful. Or neither.
  
  Charlie.

• →

  

  David Hammons performing ‘Bliz-aard Ball Sale’ (1983), Cooper Square, New York City
  Courtesy Migros Museum, Zurich © David Hammons. Photo: Dawood Bey

  ‘Bitz-aard Ball Sale’ is a performance piece in which Hammons situates himself alongside street vendors in downtown Manhattan in order to sell snowballs which are priced according to size.

• →