Dial-A-Screamer

two screamers

have you or someone you know been adversely affected by the current economic conditions? Respond or forward if so….

[+]This project builds on the success of Scream at the Economy.In a previous project, the Floating Lab Collective performed with the Screamer, a sculptural phonograph, aiming its eerie music toward government and financial institutions. In it’s present incarnation Dial-A-Screamer intends to explore specific stories from the people behind the economic realities around us. The Collective invites anyone affected by the current economic situation to share their story and express their angst via the Screamer. We are sincere in our belief that an assertive act of sharing and recognition will bring some relief from feelings of anger, abandonment, inadequacy or the many other emotions evoked by an economic reality over which we have little control. A pink slip or foreclosure, loss of independent transportation or many other affects are being experienced everyday by our neighbors as they struggle to adjust to the new economic reality.

How has your life changed as a result of economic forces beyond your control?

Call and share your experiences about the state you find yourself in and how The Screamer may assist you in financial catharsis:

646-402-5701

ext. 09141

(this number functions like a voicemail – there’s no rush – take your time and leave a message for the Screamer detailing your financial woes and an assistant will return your call to schedule an appointment.)

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Look for these ads in local DC weekly’s and on Craigslist:

“Laid-off? In foreclosure? Have you been unable to express your true feelings? Call Dial-A-Screamer and request a professional Screamer to escort you to the location of greatest anxiety and express your true feelings, for free. 646-402-5701 ext.09141″

“In these tough economic times with tensions running high and financial worry dictating our decisions, The Screamer is an ideal way to exorcise the anguish you may feel after foreclosure or the pink slip. The Screamer is a modern hero whose presence can be summoned to accompany you as you revisit a lost home or the workplace that booted you when times got tough. Maybe your anger runs toward poor governance on the part of your elected leaders and you would like to pay them a visit to express your feelings directly? The Screamer is available to hold your hand as you work through the emotional distress that the economic situation has visited upon you. Call Dial-A-Screamer and request a professional Screamer to escort you to the location of greatest anxiety and express your true feelings, for free. 646-402-5701 ext.09141″

Housework is not a paid job

This is a small but growing preoccupation with me, do you have any comments that could help me?

Housework is not a paid job

Why is it that keeping a home has shifted from being a valued occupation into a non job? So much is required to keep and run a house, which becomes apparent when the jobs are filled by paid employees and yet for those of us who attempt to take on the whole burden, the work becomes invisible.

We all need a home whether or not we live a nomadic or sedentary lifestyle, so who makes it home? THE PERSON WHO FITS THE ROLE BECOMES THE NURTURER, WHO NURTURES the nurturer ? If it comes down to being valued, how universally is the role accepted as one of value, is it family or friends or the wider community or is it the state who support the role? It could be none of the above.

Response to Charlotte

After reading and commenting on Charlotte’s last post, I thought it interesting and relevant to continue the conversation by using my post here to bring attention to it. For all those unlikely to go back and read my commment to her post, I am reposting it below: (read her post first so what is below makes sense)

“Hi Charlotte Andrew, my name is Daniel and although we haven’t met yet I think we would have an interesting conversation. It would be circuitous and lovely that way, like there’s no destination per se, or no agenda to the conversation other than to talk and listen and understand a little more about how someone else sees the world and their place in it. I share some of your qualms about posting to the blog. Today is my day to post and I will but last month I was several days late. (I periodically read the blog, less often as there are less posts to read…) Having created several blogs for small groups of people in the past and watching them wither and die, I have fairly modest expectations about any blog, especially group ones. Passion in groups is usually concentrated in a few people and even that wanes. Certainly it is a different experience to see your friends on the street than to read what they write here but I still believe that this can be a meaningful place to share info. If I can venture an observation on why this blog hasn’t matured yet is that the initial purpose of it was vague at best so, like any endeavor it has suffered for that. I’ve chosen to treat every post as addressing a different goal and hoped it was interesting to a percentage of us. Don’t stop writing, please. This was the most relevant and meaningful post yet.”

So, two things for you to read, have you read them? Is this a conversation that you think is worth having? I do and I think there a both fascintating advantages and as-yet-unrealized dangers to the proliferation of the internet. I also think that therein is an issue with usability by contributors here as it is clear that some people are unfamiliar with the norms of blogging and the specific options available to them in WordPress that allow greater organization and flexibility.  So as to not beat a dead horse, I was wondering how others have specifically been reacting to the participation on this blog, it’s purpose in your life and any other relevant (or not) comments surrounding her post, my comment and so on.

-daniel

Is Global Interactive

I f the future is Global and we spend it on the internet are we having a time of isolation ahead of us. I ask this because the blog is a great way to be together but apart, a cliché should always be avoided, I admit, but they stand to save us from thinking up a new truism everytime. I am admittedly no whiz kid on the internet, each month it takes around 20mins even finding the link for this blog and remembering how I download what I write onto the blog and I try to leave out the pictures because they go on a direct route to Mars by passing my blog altogether. But its all worthwhile because this is an intriguing way of keeping in touch with, a bit like walking down the High St and bumping into a friend and saying hi!
But, only its not, I have serious doubts if anyone ever reads it, if you are reading this now then let me know, send a comment. So Im left thinking that it’s a great way of pretending that you are walking down the High St and bumping into people, Hi Jen, Hows things, was India good, Hi Reuben, what are you upto now, and Mark you are totally irrepressible love to see some of your work. No its not like that at all, I am instead talking to myself. Once people thought you a little odd, but now noone notices everyone has plugs in there ear and is whittering to someone or noone, who cares? And this blogging is like sending myself a Christmas card, noone loves me so Ill send one to me and put it on the mantelpiece and pretend they do. I do believe we are all blogging and twittering to ourselves talk talk whitter and noone is listening, Go Global??, No go local instead. Prove me wrong!

Scream at the Economy

Making use of an art historical definition of screaming as “a kind of shorthand of modern alienation and despair, icons of anxiety and hopelessness,” the Floating Lab Collective invites people to call a phone number and scream at the economy.

The work, titled Scream at the Economy,is a participatory project that captures the expressions of angry citizens in MP3 format.  The files will be used to create a musical composition, to be played in front of relevant financial institutions.

1. Call this number: 646.402.5686 ext 90514 (24/7) to call to United States from another country +1
2. Scream at the economy. To get a clear recording please back up a few inches from your phone before you scream.
3. The screams will be used to compose music. (6 international composers will use the screams as a source for the composition)
4. Download the music created from the screams (for free) beginning June 25, 2009 at: www.floatinglabcollective.org.
5. The music will be played as a performance in public space in front of financial institutions. Using the “screamer”, to play the compositions.
   

Time, Twitter Art, and Self-Promotion

I, Boris Ostrerov, am starting my latest project titled, “Twitter Installation” at the Walkers Point Center for the Arts (WPCA) Annual Member’s Show on view from June 5^th until July 2^nd 2009.

the Twitter Installation:

Start with the username “installation1” on Twitter.  Do not tweet on this account.

Publicize this project outside of twitter before the first day of the show.

Follow all the people that chose to follow the “installation1” username.

Gather all the tweets of all the people I follow and print out on translucent paper (1×5in. strips).

Bring the tweets on the paper to the gallery each day and drop over the same spot on the floor every day.

Photograph the installation daily.

At the end of the installation the tweets are glued together into a sphere.

I will post pics daily on my site:  www.borisfineart.com

In the “Twitter Installation,” I am materializing tweets among the Twitter community, into a physical semitransparent mountain or puddle-like form.  Starting from literally nothing on the first day of the show, the pile of tweets will grow in size depending on the amount of followers the username “Installation1” gains and the amount of times each follower tweets.  Please spread the word and contribute in the growth of the mountain of tweets by following the username “Installation1” on Twitter.com and tweeting.  If enough people are involved, this installation can grow exponentially to a gigantic form, filling up so much space in the gallery that it encroaches on other artworks or blocks a walking path.   At the end of the show I will glue all the translucent strips of vellum paper into a sphere, solidifying countless conversations of a past moment in history.

Show: Friday, June 5 through July 2, 2009. Opening Reception: Friday, June 5, 5–9pm.

future perfect

Sorry, I know it’s not my day, but I wanted to share this article from the WSJ.

Today I begin a four day weekend as part of the Tate festival and as today is also my blogging day you are also globally internetly part of it. The day begins now even though I am still in bed, wearing glasses, extinct cup of tea beside me and the computer on my lap… here goes…… answers please, for each answer I will send you a virtual nomad (aka peg doll beautifully dressed in contemporary clothing made from found materials, because we are here and now talking about contemporary nomads, read below if you don’t know what Im talking about

Nomadic endings

Home became home at a certain moment, which I never recognised at the time. In that moment my home replaced the home I left behind when I was 18. That day, years later, what changed in the house or garden, or within my mind? Which new plant turned my home into my mother’s garden?
In the garden the hand that was mine was always visible, but one day it had my mother’s hand in it as well. (Maybe it was the daphne, that keeper of perfumed memories, that did it) not my fist daphne , but the first that flourished like my mother’s. Was ikt when I knew it was going to flourish that I knew I was also ‘at home’?
My childhood was criss crossed with nature wanderings, alone in it, a private world. It is nature and dirt-stained hands that , years later, take me back there. Where I can till my own earth, there I have a chance of recovering that sensation of being ‘at home’.
For others it is people: immediate family or a circle of loving friends that make them feel at home. In a city that is largely comprised of a mobile population, some long-term-temporary, some short-term-temporary, but few who live and die in the same place, much less with the same community, what constitutes a home?
In times gone by the name for those who moved to survive, in pursuit of pastures new, were called nomads. Groups of Gypsies ad Irish Travellers have continued a lifestyle of moving on in pursuit of income or a need to change location. These groups had a network to travel with or meet up with. Today many of us who live in cities move on also, but is there a network to support the the person in replacement of home? Today life is characterised in the west by a nuclear family, the smallest possible group outside of solitary. Under these circumstances how easy is it to be ‘at home’? What is a home, who is a nomad?

writing / answers

who is a nomad

The Devil

The Devil. Wether or not you come down on any side of the existential argument about this wiley character, this archetype is alive and well in many areas of our culture (I speak of America) and the world. This figure has evolved over thousands of years to embody every negative impulse we might encounter. I have a personal involvement with this archetype being from an ultrafundamental pentecostal family steered by a patriarchal preacher of 60 years. I’ve now come to think that it is sometimes necessary to have this figure on which we can blame our weaknesses, etc. The power we sometimes transfer to a mythological being that doesn’t exist in reality is quite incredible. Cloven hooves, horns and fangs are different but human enough to act as a visual focus that crosses cultures and times to play a role in our spiritual lives. Does the Devil factor into your life at all? Is there a character that fits a devil-like role but doesn’t traffic in the judeo-Christian or otherwise western iconography, and how is he/she represented? Are there correlations that should be part of the Devil discussion? You tell me