Is That All There Is: Chicago
In the latest incarnation of “Is That All There Is?”, AndrewandAndrea continue our investigations into the multiple uses and ubiquitous icons of the urban/suburban environment. Turning our attentions this time to the seemingly innocuous “aerial advertisement”, we have engaged this medium as a means of mapping the oft-tenuous relationship between public and private space, the role of the artist as producer and consumer of culture and the role of art in the urban environment.
The project to be curated as part of The Chicago Festival of Maps, proposes an expanded definition of what constitutes cartographic practice. Through strategies articulated in the previous incarnations of Is that All There Is?, namely appropriation and juxtaposition, we hope to raise similar concerns such as the use of public visual space, questions regarding access to highly public discourses as well inquire into public art’s often strained dialogue with its audience and the environment which traditionally designates these spaces in terms of specific localities. For us the aerial advertisement is the perfect exemplar of a particular venture that transgresses these often ill-defined boundaries between commercial and artistic space, blurring the lines between their respective public and private spheres. The employment of an aerial advertising strategy as art not only harkens toward our initial concerns with urban/suburban visual culture but allows us to highlight the aforementioned concerns vis a vis the framework of public/private, but also allows us access to mapping a particular social relation between producers of culture — advertising and fine art in this case – and the consumers of this culture. The result during the course of the work is a highly mobile and ephemeral diagram of this particular power relationship made possible by the plane and advertisement’s trangression of these particular spaces. It is in this deliberate employment of dominant visual language that these particular dichotomous yet mutable dispositions reveal or delineate their functions in service of particular power structures. See Baudrillard’s Fatal Strategies, McLuhan’s Maelstrom, Michel DeCerteau’s Practice of Everyday Life. The advertisement’s quasi-cryptic message aids and abets this particular aspect of the work by causing critical disjuncture between the medium, message and subjective experience.
While much criticism has been leveled against the artistic employment of dominant languages and the artistic use of appropriative strategies, Martha Rosler’s critique of Jenny Holzer and Sherry Levine comes to mind, we believe, after DeCerteau, that artists must not only acknowledge their complicity in these systems of power but also come to grips with their relationship toward and within consumptive practices. Too often as artists we see ourselves within the exclusive realm of cultural producer and often fail to own up to our participation in consumer culture.
Released in 1969 against the historical backdrop of social unrest, the Vietnam War, the collapse of the student movement and the failure of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, Peggy Lee’s Grammy Award winning rendition of Lieber and Stoller’s Is That All There Is, can be interpreted as an anthem to the malaise and apathy that has come to define the post-modern condition. The song, based on Thomas Mann’s 1864 short story entitled Disillusionment describes feelings of increased detachment and cynicism in the face of often traumatic events. Seizing upon the obvious historical parallels to our contemporary situation vis a vis the War in Iraq and the triumph of consumerism over community, we have revived and repurposed the songs lyrical content, as a means of whimsically engaging the psychological and physical space of “the city”, through the ubiquitous icons of the contemporary urban/suburban environment. Furthermore, the piece, is intended to engage its audience in debate concerning the visual environment of everyday urban space(s)including virtual space and the nature of public art. Funding for this project was generously provided by The Ontario Arts Council
