Peter Fend is fiercely committed to the practical application of earthworks in the biosphere.  Along with his own unrealized ideas, he champions the most ambitious plans of deceased associates, Gordon Matta-Clark, Dennis Oppenheim and others, to be built and executed now.

Privy to some of the correspondences Fend has with architects and engineers regarding these unrealized works, we were struck by the discouragements: “he finds the idea regressive and romantic.” “I frankly don’t see the point of realizing works that were previously unrealized due to historical limits- mechanical or ideological. ”

To deny an idea, in any field, a chance to be is a regressive act. The attempt is a progressive one. Good ideas aren’t abandoned when they age and dialogues with old works can offer new wit, insight or better.

So we introduce the beginnings of a new website we’ve started to present and re-engage the concepts of Peter Fend: INQUEST.

Jotted down this note during the Identity Symposium at Artists Space last month: Intangible assets – financial market and brands are relational and social capital. The same principles from the symposium, attributed to MoMA and Goldman Sacs, equally apply to the other end of the spectrum.

At 99¢ stores in Brooklyn these displays started to appear, featuring photos of shoplifters holding the products they got caught stealing. Looking like makeshift shrines atop the shopping isles, they offer human sacrifice to the the transformative powers of property/identity images. The individuals seem to be reduced/fused to the Colgate, Tide, Old Spice, or Pepsi they hold up to the camera.

This is the latest manifestation of “the humiliation of being subject to commodities” as described by the Situationists in the unfulfilled “Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Economy.”

As the displays grow the portraits get layered and harder to identify and the message gets complicated. Are the shop owners boasting that everyone gets caught or that it’s a popular place to boost stuff? The shoplifter photos become a new sort of capital for the shop owners—crappy photos as trophies (almost like collecting Facebook friends)— further dividing social relations in a low income neighborhood.

Go read and see Peter Fend’s Über Die Grenze at Essex Street Jan 8 – Feb 12 2002. Listen to Peter Fend here and here.

This Alaska Native Village Corporation came under government scrutiny for fraud at their subsidiary, Eyak Tek (cloud computing services). A few company execs near D.C. were allegedly making millions in a scam that never benefited The Eyak Corporation back in Alaska. Only company leaders seem to gain from the post-reservation redesign of Native communities and families— turned into identity shareholders.  Exposing the incongruity of identifying a people as a business, the branding analogy has gotten away from itself.

Name as Property: the name Eyak is the legacy of a disappeared community used to identify a Native Corporation (see the basketball shirts), a cloud computing company, and the mountain in the photo above.

*Passed in 1971, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) changed the relationship between Natives and the land from one of co-ownership of shared lands to one of corporate shareholding; i.e., land ownership was based on a corporate model, and governmental entities, including traditional or IRA “tribal” governments, were bypassed. http://www.nativeco.com/

Check out Megawords’ OUTPOST and Temporary Services’ MARKET at the Historic Essex Street Market Sept 24 – Oct 16 2011 (part of Creative Time’s “Living As Form” exhibition).

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Check out Megawords’ OUTPOST and Temporary Services’ MARKET at the Historic Essex Street Market Sept 24 – Oct 16 2011 (part of Creative Time’s “Living As Form” exhibition).

]]> http://noticenotice.com/NN2011-2012/2011/09/visit-80-essex-street/feed/ 0 http://noticenotice.com/NN2011-2012/2011/09/c-s-excerpt-6/ http://noticenotice.com/NN2011-2012/2011/09/c-s-excerpt-6/#comments Mon, 05 Sep 2011 21:00:35 +0000 admin http://noticenotice.com/?p=14149