dh in home/design editorial
dh in venice
(Source: breadcamesliced)
A young woman running through the besieged Sarajevo, 1994
Crossfire
“Running,” says Sarajevo Survival Guide” (1993), “is the favourite sport practiced by everyone in Sarajevo. All cross-roads are run through as are all the dangerous neighbourhoods.” In the besieged Sarajevo, where more people died from sniper bullets than from artillery shells, it was impossible not to run. For almost four years, says Sarajevan Zejneba Aganovic, snipers “stalked us like animals”. Do you want to know how to do it ? Ask Amina Begovic, a Sarajevan actress —”You know one sets one’s teeth and runs as fast as one can.” Yes, speed is vital. Because you have fifteen seconds at best to cross the wide avenue in the gap between the sniper’s bullets. As you run, says Sarajevan Mima Tulic Kerken, your legs go dead, muscles stop working and lungs get emptied out of air. At the most dangerous areas of the city, you have international photographers set up, ready to capture for posterity yet another life tragically cut in mid-stride. Sniper Alley, outside the Holiday Inn, is the most famous of these places—a wide boulevard connecting the city with the newer suburbs totally visible from all the surrounding hills, occupied by Serbian troops. As a woman runs across Sniper Alley to the other side, she, having survived, turns to one of the photographers: “No work for you today, asshole.” “I am not even sure whom to hate: the Chetnik sniper or those monkeys with Nikons,” writes Sarajevan poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic.
Asked to participate in the 2004 Dak’Art Biennial in Dakar, Hammons staged a sheep raffle: on makeshift stages far from the main art spaces residents gathered every day in the hope of winning an animal. Over the course of the week a dozen sheep were given away and led off by their lucky new owners. It was in many ways a devastatingly perfect example of contextually sensitive art, meeting the expectations of such Third World aesthetic interventions in an exaggeratedly literal deadpan: it was ‘culturally appropriate’ and ‘gave something back to the community’.
Hammons spoke of even more immaterial work – his piece for Sculpture Projects Muenster 2007, which involved predicting rain for 18 August (it was sunny that day), and a proposed work for the Nuit Blanche celebrations in Paris: ‘For my piece, I predicted that a double rainbow would appear over the city at night on 4 October. Actually, I saw a double rainbow about just two days before I met with representatives from the Fondation Cartier and the City of Paris about the project. Both agreed, but then approximately three days beforehand, the City of Paris removed my name from the exhibition. I think they cancelled it because they couldn’t explain it to anyone. But how do you stop or remove a rainbow from happening?’
(Source: frieze.com)
walker evans 1974
