Platform for (un)Solicited Research and Advice

Jimini Hignett

Media-Savvy

Coined ‘The Royal Drag’ by the SOHO-news, Topo Grajeda & Jimini Hignett’s wedding performance planned to challenge Charles and Di’s monopoly of prime-time news on July 29th 1981, was a wonderful combination of art and media-savvy. Performing in New York in the early 80’s under the name ‘Christians from Outer Space’, Topo and Jimini topped their usual aim of having their name appear in the local listings each week – performing at off-off-Broadway locations on the Lower East Side and on the sidewalks midtown – with this cross-dressed version of the Royal knot-tying making onto the Channel-7 news. Unfortunately no video footage of the event was made (and channel-7 refused to allow their tape to be copied) but the late Timothy Greathouse took great publicity stills, and Jo Ann Porter made some fantastic shots on the day.

This post is a contribution to An ABC of Aesthetic Journalism: Media-Savvy

Asylum Seekers

“See Asylum Seekers” – was a planned residency project by Jimini Hignett in which a family of asylum seekers were to be given the keys to a free apartment with all amenities in the Dutch city of Delft in return for which, they would be the exhibit in the final exhibition to take place showing the work of various artists in residency there, and visitors would be invited to come in and look at them.

Hignett’s intention was to both to provide housing (albeit temporary) for people in need and to encourage discussion of the treatment of asylum seekers and artists in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, due to the credit crunch, the new housing for the original occupants of the apartments was delayed and this plan was cancelled. (For more on the plan which Hignett did carry out, see Negotiating Equity.)

The photograph shows the empty apartment in question.

This post is a contribution to An ABC of Aesthetic Journalism: Asylum Seekers

Maerten in Cyberspace

In 1996 over the space of just seven days, an enormous 17th century triptych by Dutch master Maerten van Heemskerck which had been shipwrecked off the coast of Sweden is scanned and ‘returned’ in cyber-piecs to the Netherlads via internet to the Grote Laurens Kerk in Alkmaar, where a computer controlled plotter, under the eye of the public, ‘repaints’ the 6 by 8 meter triptych in the very location for which it was originally intended. The event was followed closely on the local and national media and the finsihed triptych was unveiled by Queen Beatrix.

Photos from the website of Kees Bolten

This post is a contribution to An ABC of Aesthetic Journalism: Maerten in Cyberspace

Cargo

Cargo was an extremely controversial project executed in 1992 by the Dutch Werkmij group. In the middle of the kilometres long Afsluit-dyke which was built to enclose the former Zuyder Zee, a steel giant constructed form electrical pylons, and ‘bricked up’ with 20,000 loaves baked on-site using grain from the polders and sea water from the adjacent former Zuyder Zee formed an enormous sacrificial image entitled the ‘National Gift to the Sea. Due to be ‘sacrificed’ this project, which took place at a moment when the news was full of drought and famine, caused national uproar as children collected signatures, politicians and other dignitaries complained of blasphemy. The planned submergence of the sculpture was prohibited and following its disappearance and the discovery of loaves of bread washed up along the Belgian coast it left in its wake a new national myth and an unsolved mystery.

All photos from website Kees Bolten

This post is a contribution to An ABC of Aesthetic Journalism: Cargo

Hogerhand

The Hogerhand People’s Front is a civil defense militia set up to defend the Netherlands in the event of an invasion by the US army following the so-called ‘Hague Invasion Act’ which president Bush signed on August 2nd 2002. A group of concerned Dutch citizens operating entirely within the law and armed soley with the willpower embodied in their simple motto, trans corpus mortuum: ‘over my dead body’! this peoples militia of unarmed guards patrol Dutch beaches around the clock, forming a human shield against the absurd invasion plans of our ally on the other side of the Atlantic.

This post is a contribution to An ABC of Aesthetic Journalism: Hogerhand

Media / Mass Media

Ion Barladeanu, Romania, 1946 (submitted by Jimini Hignett) – Barladeanu lived in the garbage room of a block of flats where he made collages critical of the Ceausescu regime using images torn from old magazines until he was ‘discovered’ in 2008. Nowadays he lunches with Angelina Jolie in Paris.

This post is a contribution to An ABC of Aesthetic Journalism in the category: Media / Mass Media

Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler’s work has long drawn on subjective documentary material in what could be seen as a classic example of aesthetic journalism – her project ‘The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems, a series of printed photographs and texts, dealt with issues underlying Manhattan’s skid-row The Bowery. (See also H for Housing&homelessness.)

To circumvent any possible copyright infringements, the photographs of the Bowery project are re-photographs of reproductions, the next is a photograph taken during a re-enactment of the work ‘Semiotics of the Kitchen’ performed by school children during Thomas Hirschhorns ‘Bijlmer Spinoza Festival’, as is the video.

Kitchen Semiotics re-enactment from Jimini Hignett on Vimeo.

Click on ‘re-enactment’ above to see the video on vimeo

This post is a contribution to An ABC of Aesthetic Journalism: Martha Rosler

Housing & Homelessness

‘If You Lived Here: the city in art, theory & social activism’

- a collaborative project by Martha Rosler, brought together a great many people from many different disciplines and backgrounds, presenting a wealth of (largely) documentary information in widely diverse forms and formats to produce a landmark work on the issues of housing and homelessness, in NYC in the late eighties.

This post is a contribution to An ABC of Aesthetic Journalism: Housing & Homelessness