Idea #8: Convert 7,000 “drive-thrus” to “walk-ins”

Idea #8:

Convert 7,000 “drive-thru-ers” to “walk-in-ers”

Description: Devise a way to encourage people to park their car instead of using the drive-thru at fast food places.

Objectives:

* to spread awareness of the destructive consequences of using a drive-thru

* to encourage people to park their cars instead of driving through

* to convey an idea of the environmental costs, of driving thru, expressed in terms people can relate to

* try to target habitual users in order to realize exponential effect

Project Timing: Conception:  2009 – ongoing

Artists: Tatiana Iliina (visual artist), Offroad Artist (conceptual artist)

Idea #7: Photograph 7,000 Snowflakes

Idea #7:

Photograph 7,000 Snowflakes

Description: Produce photographs of 7,000 snowflakes, showing the diversity of the artistic technique

Objectives:

* to show that the diversity of art can equal the diversity of nature

* every photo is different – to rival every snowflake different

* a conservation measure regarding snowflakes acknowledging global warming

* acknowledging snow as a cultural force

Project Timing: Conception: 2009 – ongoing

Artists: Tatiana Iliina (visual artist), Offroad Artist (conceptual artist)

Art Project #6: No End in Sight

Art Project #6: No End in Sight

Description: A never-ending landscape painting

Objectives: To explore ways of bringing the world together with art

Artists: Tatiana Iliina (visual artist); Offroad Artist (conceptual artist);

added Jan 1. 2010: the No End In Sight website is now available for viewing

Art Project #5: The Beauty of Tar

Art Project #5: The Beauty of Tar

Description: A mock public relations campaign lauding the beauty and benefits of the Alberta Tar Sands

Objectives: to make people think about the cost in terms of bad PR (while the much greater cost to the environment is cynically ignored – though ever-present)  that exploitation of the tar sands will mean for Canada and Alberta – will the cost be even greater than the profit and economic spin-offs realized?

Artists: Tatiana Iliina (visual artist); Offroad Artist (conceptual artist);

Idea #5: 7,000 Doctors in the House

Idea #5:

7,000 Doctors in the House

Description: To address the shortage of doctors in Canada by focusing the attention of artists on this problem

Objectives:

* Add 7,000 doctors to the system in Canada

* allow all Canadians to have a family doctor

* reduce strain on emergency rooms

* reduce infection rates in hospitals

* reduce waiting times

* improve access to specialists

* give average people a meaningful way of improving the medical system

Project Timing: Conception: Apr., 2008 – ongoing

step one: participation in “Image of the Invisible” exhibition and silent auction Mar. 09, to raise funds for the Montreal Children’s Hospital

Artists: Tatiana Iliina (visual artist), Offroad Artist (conceptual artist)

Note: If the numbers work out, and I believe they will, there will be a second project known as “Mille Medecins”, in French, for the Quebec portion of the project

Art Project #4: Retroactive Retrospective Catalog

Art Project #4: Retroactive Retrospective Catalog

Description: Create a retroactive phantom anniversary edition catalog for a phantom gallery that should have existed but never did (although it may soon – in some form!)

Carte postale International Fine Art., Collection Michel Pratt, from the south shore history site, marigot.ca.

Objectives: to explore whether art exists when it doesn’t exist; whether art can be created on a retroactive basis; to draw attention to the importance of seizing cultural opportunities presented; to emphasize the fragility of the cultural process

Artists: Tatiana Iliina (visual artist); Offroad Artist (conceptual artist); anticipate additional artists

New Art Project #2 The Underwater Gallery

Art Project #2: Create an underwater gallery

Objective: to draw attention to the problem of global warming and rising water levels.

Project Timing: June, 2009 – in progress (first stage of project complete)

Artists: Tatiana Iliina, Offroad Artist, participants

7,000 World-Changing Ideas

Time to get this bird in the sky.

This goes back to a couple of earlier posts I made on this and other blogs.

In short, it boils down to coming up with 7,000 ideas, each with 7,000 units, just like Joseph Beuys’ seminal 7,000 Oaks project.

Now that almost two years have gone by since I originally hit on this concept, I’m beginning to understand that it will be difficult to elaborate it much more than I originally did – without actually starting it.  Probably the best course is to just put one concept out there every day.

For now, I may even be flexible with the 7,000 aspect ~ leaving it open to add as we go along.

So, here it is – Idea No. 1:

1. Help build membership of 7,000 people in a non-profit organization for special needs

The organization: “RAPID” (Resources for the Anglophone Population with Intellectual Difficulties), located on the south shore of the Montreal area in Quebec, Canada.

Objective: to help build this into a sustainable, viable organization with a membership of 7,000 people

Artists: Tatiana Iliina (visual artist), Offroad Artist (conceptual artist)

$10 Billion Tourism Deficit Bites Harper in the Ass – But Does He Know it?

Here’s a case of being so dumb you wouldn’t know a bad move if it bit you in the ass.

A report by the Canadian Tourism Commission has laid out the bare facts: That Canada’s tourism deficit has spiraled from under $2 billion in 2003 to over $10 billion last year. Judging by steep year over year shortfalls in traffic from the U.S. in the first part of this year, the trend will continue and the situation will worsen.

At the same time, the Harper government is reducing spending on culture.

The bottom line, the country becomes even less attractive for foreign tourists. The more you reduce spending in culture, the more bland and uninspiring our country becomes.

Get with it!

“Art Movements Come and Go” -A.Y. Jackson, Aug., 1958

“It is hard now to believe that years ago we who were members of it were regarded as radicals.” – So said A.Y. Jackson 50 years ago in the introduction to his autobiography. As we make our own cross-Canada conceptual and artistic pilgrimage, both in our 50th years, we (Tatiana Iliina and myself, offroad artist) look to Jackson and the Group of Seven for a certain spiritual connection, if nothing else.  Indeed, as we seek out and explore new means of representation, previous generations of innovators and art explorers stand for something even more inspiring than may have been the case before.)  

“Art movements come and go. When one group becomes stabilized it is by passed by younger and more vigorous groups. In some cases new movements work a revolution in art, as did the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.Others are important only to the countries that gave them birth. Members of the Hudson River and the Glasgow schools of painting, among many others, have been an influence in their time and place.

The Group of Seven ranks with such local movements. It is hard now to believe that years ago we who were members of it were regarded as radicals. We were revolutionaries only in that we expected an art movement to develop in our country at a time when most Canadians were completely indifferent to any form of art, and because we attempted to paint objectively the kind of country that comprises most of Canada. The majority of Canadians, at the time, were shocked by our efforts, yet we did create something in the field of painting that was distinctly our own. Lately, it has become the fashion to disparage our achievements as a mere symptom of nationalism in a backward country.

Most of the exhibitions that are now sent abroad show next to nothing to depict the country of their origin. Today it is considered a virtue to have ideas and ideals that do not concern themselves with race or geography. Perhaps in these days of frenzied nationalism it is well to have art denatured and denationalized. But who will support art that knows no country? It seems obvious enough that the general public will continue to prefer pictures of places and objects with which they are familiar, even though the paintinng is of a type that is considered by the higher critics to be obsolete.

Perhaps in the future we shall have divergent groups: the advanced artists who talk of spatial relationships, tensions, densities, tangible volumes and so on, and who will probably spend most of their time in New York or Paris; and the painters who look to nature and are content to draw their inspiration from a land of vast spaces and infinite variety of which we are only beginning to be aware.

Conditions are more favourable for the artist in Canada today than they were when I began painting. People are better informed than they were and more tolerant of ideas. The artist is not now regarded with suspicion. He can speak for himself; in fact, he has become so respectable that artists are now in demand as speakers at service clubs and educational centres. Intelligent critics endeavour to interpret for the public the intentions of painters that are quite incomprehensible to the layman. Things were different forty years ago; Then a little group of embattled artists found itself in opposition to nearly everybody in the country. Through their efforts the restraining hand of convention was loosened and new life was breathed into the arts in Canada. Today the artist has few hindrances and much support in any effort he makes to win prestige in the wider field of international art.”

A.Y. Jackson,
Manotick, August, 1958

(from the introduction to A Painter’s Country, his autobiography)