Michael Garner

Slow News Day II

michael-garner.com — Wed, 14 May 2025 09:50:14 +0000

Slow News Day II

Illegal Art (How to Rob a Bank)

A B — Sun, 22 Sep 2024 05:27:53 +0000

Illegal Art (How to Rob a Bank)

This newspaper article was originally published in August 2001 in The Lakeville Journal.

To rob the Robarts branch of Coutts & Co., a bank in London, you’ll need to be cautious. But more importantly, you’ll need to be able to follow directions well.

You see, Janice Kerbel has already done all of the time-consuming research and planning for you. She’s meticulously timed the twice-daily arrival of the armored trucks. She’s drawn a detailed blueprint of the bank’s floor plan and surroundings, noted the small area that isn’t under surveillance, and conveniently taken black-and-white photos of it. She has described every turn of a 2,000+-mile escape route for you, through the Channel Tunnel and into France. All that remains to be done is the robbery itself.

Kerbel’s work, entitled Bank Job, is part of the Aldrich Museum’s exhibit, entitled “Art at the Edge of the Law,” which will run through September 9. Kerbel effectively blurs the line between crime and art, even to the point where she chose a date for the robbery to take place. (Instead of a robbery, however, Kerbel released a “do-it-yourself” handbook on that day containing the aforementioned plans.)

But if you think Kerbel’s exhibit is “on the edge” of legality, some of the other artists’ works will downright stun you. For example, Barton Lidice Beneš, an HIV-positive artist, created a work of art called Flying Missile. It’s very simple, really. He took a syringe and drew some of his blood. Then he attached a syringe, needle facing forward, to a plastic toy airplane. Voila! He could effectively infect someone with HIV from many feet away. Another of his works was called Molotov Cocktail, and you can probably guess what that involved. But Beneš isn’t just a nihilist. In his work, he wants to show that having HIV makes him feel like he’s a living weapon.

Other works at the exhibition have been widely publicized in the mass media. For example, during the 2000 presidential election, the Vienna-based “ubermorgen” hosted a web site called [V]ote-auction, originally started by American student James Baumgartner. The idea was that any registered American voter could go to the site and sell their vote. After signing up, their name was added to the database of people from their state that had registered. Any company, individual or organization could bid on that block of votes and, when the auction was over, the money would be equally split up among the members of the group. ([V]ote-auction reports that Connecticut voters got $24.83 each, Massachusetts voters got $13.43, and New Yorkers got $18.96.) The reasoning behind the site boils down to: since corporations and organizations already use large amounts of money on political advertising, why not give the money directly to the public? (Their tagline: “Bringing Capitalism and Democracy Closer Together.”) They weren’t ignored. CNN ran 7 stories on the project, and 13 lawsuits were brought against the company. The Aldrich displays a CNN broadcast and some of the legal papers from a lawsuit. Incidentally, vote-auction.net is still up and running, and receives over 150,000 hits a day. They soon plan on expanding their services internationally. […]

Nearly everything at this exhibit is startling and makes you reconsider beliefs that you take for granted—a trademark of great contemporary art. This is important to note, because these works get under your skin. They twitch. But the point of the exhibit is not to glorify breaking the law. Rather, they are a safe way of exploring the law. After all, the London bank was never robbed, no one was infected with HIV from a model airplane; and [V]ote-auction didn’t actually send out checks. These artists want to show you what might have been, and let you draw your own conclusions.

Of course, the Aldrich isn’t just another museum. In fact, it was the first contemporary art museum to open in the US. One reason for their excellent reputation, associate curator Jessica Hough told me, is that they exhibit art that almost anyone can relate to. They choose broad topics like family or faith as themes in order to draw people into the art. And there’s hardly anything broader than law, which surrounds us at all times. This universality, combined with the high quality of the exhibition, makes the Aldrich museum a worthwhile destination for a weekend trip.

One last thing. After you’ve successfully fled to France and are sipping a Cabernet Sauvignon at your chateau in the Loire valley, don’t forget where you saw Janice Kerbel’s name first, ok? Checks payable to [Michael Garner].

The Aldrich Museum is located at 258 Main Street (Route 35) in Ridgefield, CT. Museum hours are Tuesday-Sunday noon to 5 p.m. and Friday noon to 8 p.m. Call (203) 438-4519 for more information.

CIA Budget

M Garner — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 13:32:22 +0000

CIA Budget

MANU-2024-03286 Determination

THEREPG < > Thu, Sep 5, 2024 at 7:41 PM;

To: Michael < >

Cc: PCRB < >

Hello Michael,

The Prepublication Classification Review Board completed its review of your artwork related to CIA budget numbers, which we received on 3 September 2024. No classified information was identified. Therefore, no changes are required for publication or sharing with others.

. PCRB review does not represent Agency endorsement or verification of this work.

If you add new content, please submit it before sharing and highlight the new language to expedite our review.

. PCRB review does not represent Agency endorsement or verification of this work.

We appreciate your cooperation with prepublication review. You may reach out to us via with any questions or concerns.

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PCRB

Untitled (Prada)

M Garner — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 12:20:24 +0000

Untitled (Not For Sale)

On Emptiness (Book excerpt)

M Garner — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 03:57:20 +0000

On Emptiness (Book excerpt)

I believe myside bias in humans is one of our greatest flaws—the tendency to double down, to get defensive, to stubbornly refuse to change our minds when we are exposed to contradictory information. I’ve tried to avoid this as I progress through my “life course,” as scientists clinically put it. But along with reactance,[1] this phenomenon is one of the sad flaws of evolution that isn’t easily remedied, and in the political realm, for instance, it can have deleterious effects that wholly prevent people from grappling with reality.

People crave ascribing a deeper meaning to everything. To see symbols. To jam in context and integrate an experience, a sight, a smell, to the network of simulacra in their brains. But maybe it’s better to do the opposite, as Buddhism teaches in the concept of “emptiness” (Śūnyatā). To strip an experience of its context, its essence, its socially constructed value. Don’t see a tree and think, “That’s just a tree.” View it and behold the beauty of an entity that waves and shimmers with shades of green, striking brown.

Incidentally, as I’ve transitioned into the art world, I’m seeing the concept of emptiness has popped up repeatedly, though it’s not referred to as such. Two books I’m currently reading illustrate what I mean.

In Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker, the author discusses plunging herself into the art world and emerging with a newfound way of seeing the world. In one situation, she describes an exercise in which her drawing partner describes a commonplace object to her, but as if they were an alien with no concept of what the object actually was. “…I felt like I was glimpsing the outlines of my filter of expectation,” she wrote, referring to a cognitive neuroscience concept in which our brains filter out a great deal of extraneous perceptual data to focus on what is important. Bosker cites a contact in the art world: “There’s something magical about looking at the world without identifying what you’re looking at. You see so, so, so much more.” Bosker concludes that, “The trick was to see things by unseeing them.”

In the same vein, authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross come close to describing “emptiness” in their book, Your Brain on Art, about neuroaesthetics, a new field looking at how the brain interprets art and its effects on our psyche, The authors describe the aftermath that can come from the awe and surprise of seeing art: it wakes you up in your everyday life. “Maybe you notice something mundane—a piece of trash on the sidewalk, or a building, or a parking meter, and you see it fresh,” they write. “You notice all that’s around you, and you notice it in a surprisingly new way.” Śūnyatā.

Another artist I’ve mentioned also understood the concept of emptiness: René Magritte. In his work La Trahison des Images [The Treachery of Images], which you’ve probably seen, he writes “Ceci n’est pas un pipe” [This is not a pipe] under the clearly painted image of a pipe. What does the work say? It might say that, applying the concept of emptiness, you are not looking at a pipe, you are looking at very thin layers of pigments on a flat, canvas surface. He’s breaking things down to their molecular, banal reality.

Obtain the book here.

[1] Essentially, doing the opposite of what you’re told to do in order to assert your independence.

Untitled (Not For Sale)

M Garner — Sat, 10 Aug 2024 08:09:55 +0000

Untitled (Not For Sale)

Prints of this work are available for purchase. Please contact info [at] garner.art for more information.

Michael Garner

Slow News Day II

Slow News Day II

Illegal Art (How to Rob a Bank)

Illegal Art (How to Rob a Bank)

CIA Budget

CIA Budget

Untitled (Prada)

Untitled (Not For Sale)

On Emptiness (Book excerpt)

On Emptiness (Book excerpt)

Untitled (Not For Sale)

Untitled (Not For Sale)

Untitled (Fascism series), 2024

Untitled (Fascism series), 2024

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