Money Shots
It’s money. It’s art. It’s money art!
View more money art on the Flavor Pill website. (They link to the artist’s website, which isn’t loading for me – maybe you’ll have better luck.)
Subversive Product Placement
I love this:
“This past weekend in New York City, TrustoCorp — a notorious and anonymous artist (or artists) ‘dedicated to highlighting the hypocrisy and hilarity of human behavior through sarcasm and satire [by] targeting areas in the public domain typically reserved for messages of trust and authority’ — placed over 100 re-branded food and beverage products in shops, bodegas and Kmarts in the greater Manhattan area.”
(Source: The Jailbreak)
View more pictures and find other examples of subversive social commentary in the original Jailbreak post.
Related Links:
- From Creative DC: Reclaiming Public Space
- From Adbusters: Spoof Ads
Roadtrip for a Cause
Tod and Justin Purvis
My friend Justin Purvis (who I met through Washington Improv Theater) suffers from Choroideremia, a degenerative eye disease that can lead to blindness. His brother, Tod, was recently diagnosed with the condition, as well, and the two of them have decided to do something to raise awareness of the disease, while undertaking a sight-seeing trip that they may not be able to enjoy in the future. (more…)
And Everything Is Going Fine
Spalding Gray
“I like telling the story of life more than living it.”
- Spalding Gray
One of the highlights of this year’s SXSW was seeing “And Everything is Going Fine,” a film about late performance artist Spalding Gray.
Editor Susan Littenberg and director Steven Soderbergh weave together the story of Gray’s life in his own words, artfully selecting and arranging clips from his performances and interviews from over 90 hours of footage. The depiction of Gray’s life that emerges is moving and poetic, and reveals that telling personal stories on stage was Gray’s way of keeping the chaos of the world at bay, if only for 60 to 90 minutes at a time. I related strongly to his journey to finding his artistic voice, and to his comment that writing was so hard because unlike performing, you didn’t get any feedback; I wonder what a Spalding Gray blog might have been like.
We’ll never know, of course, because in 2004, Gray killed himself. The film extensively foreshadows Gray’s suicide, but fails to reference it outright (more…)
More on Improv Lessons for Freelancers
The awesome Zach Ward of Dirty South Improv blogged about Improv Lessons for Freelancers (a session I led with Jordan yesterday at SXSW); he offers a nice distillation of some key points, plus a video of Jordan leading the “Yes” game. It’s fascinating to see the moment when people “get it”…which is why so many of my friends adore teaching Level 1 improv.
I’ll be posting my own overview of the session once I get more than 10 minutes of down time! (SXSW is a rather manic experience…)
Related Links
- Zach’s TED talk on the improv principle of “Yes, and” (video)
- Article from Fast Company: “Do Improv Comedians Make the Best Design Thinkers?” (thanks to Shawn Westfall for sharing this on Facebook)
