Experience 'Shanty Living' at the Navy Yard
The art piece profiled in the vid above was slated to be moved from an Orchard Street gallery to the Navy Yard at the beginning of this month and be available for rent for $199 a week. While we can’t find evidence on the web proving that it is, in fact, somewhere in the Navy…
The art piece profiled in the vid above was slated to be moved from an Orchard Street gallery to the Navy Yard at the beginning of this month and be available for rent for $199 a week. While we can’t find evidence on the web proving that it is, in fact, somewhere in the Navy Yard, the description is fascinating: “Maison des Cartes, [is] a show model ‘shanty timeshare’ built from 52 separate pieces of found materials…Sales representatives present the viewers with the chance to buy into the private residence club. Upon the show’s completion, the structure will be rebuilt in the scenic Brooklyn Navy Yard.”
Lisa Kirk: House of Cards [Vernissage TV]
Ok, guess that should teach me to comment before watching the whole thing. I did, and parts are amusing, and have “bite”. Maybe I’m a bit curmudgeonly today, but social satire doesn’t move me as “art”. It was well done, as it pissed me off, which I guess is the point.
rob- LOL
omg youre right! who does she think she is? michael jackson!?!
*rob*
rob – she did and it was confiscated. google paris hilton monkey
uh Paris does not, nor has she ever, owned a monkey!
*rob*
LOL, Bxgrl, you nailed it.
I can picture Paris tripping over the doorway into the living room, looking about in horror while attempting to maintain some bit of her version propriety and “hotness”.
Perhaps- well said. But I think her purpose was to make it so ridiculously obvious. And I think her target was the rich who donate money to worthy causes without truly understanding the dire circumstances people live in. Sort of like Paris Hilton who thinks owning a monkey means she really cares about protecting wild animals from extinction.
omigod! This was hilarious!!! When she walked over the cardboard boxes taped to the floor and asked us to notice the beautiful parquet floors I laughed till tears ran down my face. The sleeping hammock (“strong enough for 2 adults”) with a huge gaping hole, the perspex bar with a handle you can hold onto to if you get drunk. Totally a hoot.
FYI “For the last decade, Lisa Kirk (born in New York City in 1967) has produced multi-media work and environmental installations that explore capitalism, terrorism and political violence” from the website.She nailed capitalism with this one.
I will definitely second noklissa’s argument, and encourage watching the whole video before assessing the piece. Admittedly, trying to watch several minutes of some combination of stilted acting and crushingly awful broker-babble is incredibly painful, but that’s exactly the point. The piece is playing up the way in which real estate became a trade in non-existent products with non-existent money within a system that produced its own (bizarre) value. (Something decried, btw, by commenters on a very large percentage of Brownstoner posts.)
If I had a criticism of the piece, it would be that it references a very real architectural condition of poverty (the shack), without (as far as I can tell from the video) really addressing the implications of this reference. ‘The shack’ in this piece seems to be simply a ‘house of cards’ – an otherwise valueless, found object that is given a fictional value in a dysfunctional market. (Definite nod to Duchamp’s readymades, of course.) But a shack, in Brazil or South Africa, is something very different than a mere ‘house of cards’, it is a condition of social and political life – and not, by any means, a worthless one. Of course, I am not totally ruling out the possibility that some of these issues might be addressed in other parts of the piece.
(Also, if you think this is the most annoying art project of the year, you have been lucky enough to miss a whole lot of soul-destroying shows.)