FLUXFEST CHICAGO 2013

FluxFest Chicago

Cecil Touchon, Director, The Ontological Museum, directed this photograph of participants of FluxFest Chicago, held recently in Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art.

Many participants of this festival also participated in and hosted ABAD exhibitions. The Fluxfest was spearheaded by artist Keith Buchholz. Click the photo to enlarge full screen. (It's a fisheye!). PHOTO © 2011 CECIL TOUCHON.

Oil War Gas Station

Artists knit a tea-cosy for a New York Gas Station in the 2008 collaborative work- Oil War. International Fiber Collaborative, put together this amazing art work – a serious Store Front Window – and St. Louis, MO artist Keith A. Buchholz brought it to my attention. He says, "The panel just left of the telephone pole – to the left of the pink one – is mine - theres a close up of it in the album." (see below, right). The idea that artists can change the landscape of the global oil economy is not exactly new, but it is ever renewable (unlike the global energy policy of sucking out every last drop of oil from the earth). In 1000 years the very idea of a "gas" station will be as strange as folks paying for phone calls (well, some people still pay for phone calls now) with quarters. Oil is, in the end, a finite resource. And now, of course, a political tool that is used to crush people who have become dependent on the black stuff to get where they want to go. My grandfather built Sunoco stations in Brooklyn. He grew up riding a horse. It's a strange war we're fighting.

Comments, anyone?