Artist Jonathon Keats has checked in with news about his latest project. He's helped arrange for some plasmodial slime molds to become the "first non-human scholars-in-residence" at Hampshire College. The slime molds are being put to work analyzing various complex issues, such as immigration and drug policy, so that we can all benefit from "the unbiased insights of slime molds."
The slime molds have already recommended that cannabis should be legalized:
Slime molds were charged with investigating how availability of soft drugs such as marijuana might impact dependency on hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin: to determine whether cannabis is a gateway to dangerous chemical addiction or a gateway from addiction to well-being. Confronted with a binary choice between a highly-addictive chemical and a nutritionally-balanced meal, slime mold populations consistently choose the former, with consequences that can be fatal. However when presented with a chemical gradient between the addictive substance and nutrients – equivalent to availability of gateway drugs in a human environment – P. polycephalum has shown a tendency to migrate away from the hard stuff but not the opposite. Although the results are still preliminary, they were so remarkable that consortium secretary Jonathon Keats communicated them directly to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, sending a letter stating the slime molds' position that "cannabis and its chemical derivatives should be legalized by the United States government."
In 2002, artist Tracey Emin's cat, Docket, went missing. So she put up 'missing cat' posters around her neighborhood. But since she was a famous artist, people immediately began taking the posters down and selling them. Reportedly, they fetched prices as high as £500 each.
This prompted a spokeswoman from Emin's gallery to issue a statement: "Tracey does deal with memorabilia, but the posters are not works of art, it's simply a notice of her missing cat to alert neighbours."
The Missing Cat posters are problematic because the moment they reach a public they are coopted by the poncif already set up by the artist, and as such they become arranged "as part of [her] oeuvre". They are readily coopted because Emin’s particular trademark is "near-absolute identification of the artist with her work": work that is characterized by confessional and subjective autobiographical content that the posters also supply. We might say that Emin has created a convincing, life-sized tableau of her life, and it is difficult to exclude from this tableau anything she does or produces.
Dutch conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader (1942-1975) created a series of short films of himself falling down in various situations, such as from a roof and out of a tree.
Ader is one of the few people who ever literally died for their art. In 1975, he attempted to make a solo Atlantic crossing in the smallest boat ever. It was supposed to be part of an extended art project about a lonely figure in search of the miraculous. His boat made it across, but he didn't.
I just received my contributor's copy of this phenomenal book, full of the most gorgeous weird art by my friend Todd Schorr. My part in it was tiny, just a small essay on the art. But I am extremely proud to be connected in any way with this genius work.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.