world is a fuck
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I just really like this tweet
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“Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is a 1991 piece by Felix Gonzalez-Torres in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s a spilled pile of candy.
The pile of candy consists of commercially available, shiny wrapped confections. The physical form of the work changes depending on the way it is installed. The work ideally weighs 175 pounds (79 kg) at installation, which is the average body weight of an adult male. “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) represents a specific body, that of Ross Laycock, Gonzalez-Torres’ partner who died of AIDS in 1991. This piece of art serves as an “allegorical portrait,” of Laycock’s life.
Visitors are invited to take a piece of candy from the work. Gonzalez-Torres grew up Roman Catholic and taking a candy is a symbolic act of communion, but instead of taking a piece of Christ, the participant partakes of the “sweetness” of Ross. As the patrons take candy, they are participants in the art. Each piece of candy consumed is like the illness that ate away at Ross’s body.
Multiple art museums around the world have installed this piece.
Per Gonzalez-Torres’ parameters, it is up to the museum how often the pile is restocked, or whether it is restocked at all. Whether, instead, it is permitted to deplete to nothing. If the pile is replenished, it is metaphorically granting perpetual life to Ross.
In 1991, public funding of the arts and public funding for AIDS research were both hot issues. HIV-positive male artists were being targeted for censorship. Part of the logic of “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is you can’t censor free candy without looking ridiculous, and the ease of replicability of the piece in other museums makes it virtually indestructible.
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the thing that really gets me about certain popular but incorrect posts which cross my dash of the “scientists were baffled until they talked to Normal People, who told them what was actually going on! ohohohoho, those silly ivory tower academics!” type is that aside from promoting a tiresome anti-intellectual narrative, they’re incredibly disrespectful to the actual process of science. which involves - brace yourselves - people being wrong. a lot, actually! science requires us to be wrong a lot! we put forward hypotheses and then we test them and most of the time we’re wrong. but sometimes we’re wrong in ways that move us closer to the truth. note that those stories exist because researchers did, uh, talk to people and change their theories when they acquired new information. if they hadn’t, the story wouldn’t exist at all.
it’s also disrespectful to the non-academics who contributed - by reducing it to “oh, everybody knew this, it was just the silly researchers who never asked” it minimises the insight offered by the external experts (because they are experts! in their own fields!). it does actually take expertise and insight to put together archaeological discoveries and craft knowledge. if it was easy everybody would be doing it, you know?
none of which is to say that there aren’t ~issues~ in modern science and academia with whose knowledge we privilege and people clinging to theories because they don’t respect or like the source of the evidence against them. but being wrong is not in and of itself the problem there. and turning the process of research into a stick to beat people with is a great way to directly impede research.
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The bar was so low it was practically a tripping hazard in Hell, yet here you are, limbo dancing with the devil
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long-term nuclear waste warning messages + rich people’s indoor swimming pools
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When we’re new to adulthood, it doesn’t immediately occur to all of us that you’re almost always allowed to leave a situation, because growing up we’re forced to stay in situations until someone dismisses us and/or takes us home, or if we do leave on our own accord there’s someone waiting at home to say “we don’t quit in this family!” Boring party? You can leave. You don’t like the lecture? You can walk out. New doctor not working out? You can end the appointment, you don’t need to wait for them to dismiss you. Bad date? You can just go home. Leaving a situation prematurely might have consequences, but unless you’re under arrest or serving prison time, it’s pretty much always allowed.
–commenter Allison @ askamanager
