45 + 10 points
Art On The Go by Burn Unit
December 1st, 2007 10:58 AM
This struck me with a great force of urgency one morning on the bus in to work. So I dug around and found a bus brochure, a toffee wrapper and some gum. I felt a vision of an arrow thrust, or of the arc of a fountain. I felt vibrancy in my heart. So I rolled up the paper and stuck the edges together with the used gum--I had to work the gum in my hands to get it sticky again. I didn't title the piece at the time and barely documented it before I had to leap off.
The initial success got me activated. I began to concoct in my mind a delightful task garden, documenting my artworks-on-the-go as I am struck by them. Seems like the busses in Minneapolis are really clean or something cuz I had a tough time finding material. The second day of tasking I found a little cluster of bus transfers all together and then a bottle cap. The black & white contrasts of the passes interested me. So I tore them up and laid them out kind of in a minimalist flag-style, along with the single yellow dot. I titled the piece and snapped the photo as I was leaving. I was the only vacant seat, so surely the person getting on had to confront my artwork, which I'd titled and put the sf0.org url on. I also found the most wonderful sheet which became Forces; I'll explain that shortly.
I had a section of newsprint (the Onion if I recall) and another chunk of one of those brochures. I bound the newsprint roll together with a bent paper clip I found and tore down strips to make a kind of plant shape. I titled it Blossom, put the url on it, stuck it in the cracks in a seat, documented, and fled.
Forces is not, strictly speaking, a work made entirely of bus-found materials. I was so struck by the ... the suchness of the crumpled equations and drawings on pale green graph paper stuck down in the seat. It had the feel of a readymade. I wanted to honor the readymade spirit, so I thought about it for a while. I knew where there was a thrown-out picture frame and I went and found that again. In the spirit of the original readymades, I drew a black moustache on the graph paper, and signed it B. Unitt. I adhered it to the cardboard backing inside the frame, printed up a proper label for the backside, and carried it onto the bus. I found a good place to secure it and stuck it there.
I printed out a whole page of labels which I'll write titles on when I make new artwork. This will hopefully draw some people to come and see the garden as it grows.
The initial success got me activated. I began to concoct in my mind a delightful task garden, documenting my artworks-on-the-go as I am struck by them. Seems like the busses in Minneapolis are really clean or something cuz I had a tough time finding material. The second day of tasking I found a little cluster of bus transfers all together and then a bottle cap. The black & white contrasts of the passes interested me. So I tore them up and laid them out kind of in a minimalist flag-style, along with the single yellow dot. I titled the piece and snapped the photo as I was leaving. I was the only vacant seat, so surely the person getting on had to confront my artwork, which I'd titled and put the sf0.org url on. I also found the most wonderful sheet which became Forces; I'll explain that shortly.
I had a section of newsprint (the Onion if I recall) and another chunk of one of those brochures. I bound the newsprint roll together with a bent paper clip I found and tore down strips to make a kind of plant shape. I titled it Blossom, put the url on it, stuck it in the cracks in a seat, documented, and fled.
Forces is not, strictly speaking, a work made entirely of bus-found materials. I was so struck by the ... the suchness of the crumpled equations and drawings on pale green graph paper stuck down in the seat. It had the feel of a readymade. I wanted to honor the readymade spirit, so I thought about it for a while. I knew where there was a thrown-out picture frame and I went and found that again. In the spirit of the original readymades, I drew a black moustache on the graph paper, and signed it B. Unitt. I adhered it to the cardboard backing inside the frame, printed up a proper label for the backside, and carried it onto the bus. I found a good place to secure it and stuck it there.
I printed out a whole page of labels which I'll write titles on when I make new artwork. This will hopefully draw some people to come and see the garden as it grows.
All are interesting. Despite its impermanence, the second piece is particularly intriguing. I hope at least someone (outside of us) had a chance to see it before it was scattered.
The framed "cheat sheet" is great. (But I'm always a sucker for found text.) There's a clear progression across the page. Along the top third and down the left hand frame, we see someone with plenty of time, pulling equations from old problem sets and thinking carefully about what to include. By the time we get to the lower right hand corner, the student has run out of time to prepare and has reached material recently covered and poorly understood. "Will calculus be on the exam? Oh shit, I better put something in. What was that the professor said about efficiency? Damn, I didn't understand it. But there was an equation with a box around it on the blackboard, so I'll add it. Oh shit, I forgot to put in the equilibrium points in the mass on a spring problem. That could be important. Ack, I'm out of time. Oh well, this will have to do."
One wonders whether they were lost before or after the exam? Dropped in a panic on the way to class, or thrown down in as gesture of triumph on the way home afterward?