The Dunning-Kruger Diaries, Part Two

Performance artist Angeliki Chiado Tsoli is, we’re told, “interested in… contributing her knowledge as an artistic and pedagogical tool.” Her work, we learn, “explores the political, poetic and displaced body through actions in the public space, photography, video, sound, installation and experimental writing.” Further exploration is done “through a visual and mental poetic space.” If the magnitude of her labours is somehow unclear, we’re also informed,

Angeliki aims to… challenge the existence of social, economic, cultural, and class-based inequalities.

Do bear these things in mind as you thrill to the video embedded below, in which Ms Tsoli unleashes a fearless, selfless and terribly radical “intervention” at a crossing on Michigan Avenue, Chicago. Said intervention, titled Attempting to Reach Equilibrium in Times of Dystopia, is of course crammed with aesthetic value. A particular highlight occurs around 2:30 when a passing police car stops, resulting in a need to explain that what is happening is actually art. 

“Is she all right?”

Comments

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Angeliki aims to… challenge the existence of social, economic, cultural, and class-based inequalities.

Natch.

[David]

Natch.

Well, quite. Though how, of course, is conveniently unclear. Perhaps Ms Tsoli hopes to remake the world, and transform human nature, by mildly bemusing a handful of crossing users.

[Alex]

I actually do see a lot of symbolism here! The large zero she's holding, and balancing on, represents among others the amount of talent she's got, and the amount she's contributing to society, among others.

It also - when in front of her stomach - symbolizes the empty wombs of the "childfree" and other "free spirits" who can't be tied down by such mundane things as family life, and of those who (like AOC) think that having children is a bad thing. It further also represents the strain of modern "progressives" who vote for unlimited abortion up to, and even beyond, birth.

Finally, it also is "tire"some to watch.

[David]

At last, the path to socialism.

[Steve E]

At first I felt my artistic sensibilities being tread upon. Then I decided to just roll with it, though by the end it left me tired.

[ Reports for scolding. ]

[Boatswain's Mate]

I'll take "Epic Fail" for 600, Alex.

Angeliki aims to… challenge the existence of social, economic, cultural, and class-based inequalities.

What is "Moronically balancing on a tire on a downtown Chicago street for no discernible reason?"

[Y. Knott]

If she'd roll with the tire (sorry - "tyre") all the way across the intersection, I'd pay to watch...

Once...

[Alice]

At last, the path to socialism.

Symbolism!

[Steve E]

Now if the Beatles walked by I might be impressed.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...contributing her knowledge...

Yeah, I don't think that would even add up to the proverbial two cents worth.

If you visit Chicago then make sure to visit the Defibrillator Gallery where performance artist Angeliki Chaido Tsoli is currently completing her academic training as a Curatorial Assistant.

If I was mad enough to visit Chicago without at least a supporting mechanized infantry company, that would not exactly be on my top 1000 list of things to do or see, sorry. I do rather like "academic training as a Curatorial Assistant", though who knew you needed training to be a gofer for a real curator (though I guess fetching coffee would be in line with her, ahem, artistic talent) ?

[Watcher In The Dark]

The woman has a spare tyre: she should have gone to a reputable slimming club. I'm sure Chicago has one.

[Sam]

How very intersectional.

[Sam]

I'll take a stab at a postmodern* interpretation:

Carrying a tire in a busy urban intersection while under-dressed for a Chicago winter represents the poor and marginalized trying - and failing - to understand the bourgeois world they've been thrust into. The downtrodden victims of American capitalism only grasp the technology whirring around them on the most superficial level, and so perform an imitation of an automobile after being dangerously - and purposely - misled about the function of a cross walk**. This hetero-patriarchal system seeks to dominate the very right to walk in a city, which is of course an outgrowth of the xenophobic anti-immigrant bigotry of American capitalism, and clearly advantages the white males walking past who created it and take it for granted given their privilege.

As a bonus the police state feigns concern for the artist of clothing of color but goes on to contribute to the post-industrial heteronormative white supremacist patriarchal systems that rely on marginalized communities' inability to navigate the oppressive intersections built by slave labor and perpetuated by Trump.

*Not actually knowing what postmodern means, I'll just BS like my life depends on it
**I believe you islanders call them zehb-bra crossings

[David]

How very intersectional.

Ba-dum tisshh.

[ Fetches bottle of hamster urine. ]

[Jacob]

In 2013, Tsoli graduated with distinction from the department of Fine and Applied Arts, Aristotle university of Thessaloniki.

So she's one of the best they churned out? Holy crap.

[bobby b]

"This is your brain on drugs."

[jeff]

I hope I'm not being misogynistic but why do I always wish the lady artist was naked while profoundly declaring her art? At least then I would view objectively.

[aelfheld]

[...] resulting in a need to explain that what is happening is actually art.

And how, exactly, would she be able to explain that? Without lying that is.

[Orthodoc]

This actually looks like fun. Can anyone play?

[Rafi]

Attempting to Reach Equilibrium in Times of Dystopia

In an actual dystopia will the art be even worse?

[David]

In an actual dystopia will the art be even worse?

Heh. It strikes me that the most dystopian thing visible in the video is Ms Tsoli’s conception of what constitutes art. The prevalence of such tat, in which aesthetics and accomplishment play no part, rather implies a cultural decline.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...why do I always wish the lady artist was naked while profoundly declaring her art?

Be careful what you wish for, and that is mild compared to some of the other stuff David has found over the years.

[Tim]

“Is she all right?” ... at some point, performance art becomes indistinguishable from mental illness.

[Melinda]

Crossing Michigan at Monroe St, from across the street towards The Art Institute of Chicago, she was aiming her "art" at her peers at school there, no one else, on the way the Darwinian Speedbumpistan.

[Kevin]

at some point, performance art becomes indistinguishable from mental illness

A fan of cowboy films, Bang Bang used to travel the buses and trams of the city staging mock shoot-outs with passing people (hence his nickname). He carried a large church key in his pocket which he used as a 'gun'.

Bang Bang interviewed and shoots his '45

[Lancastrian Oik]

I hope I'm not being misogynistic but why do I always wish the lady artist was naked while profoundly declaring her art? At least then I would view objectively.

A brief exposure to the doings* of Ms. Rocio Bolíver might make you change your mind.

*Google for yourself. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

[NTSOG]

''... I always wish the lady artist was naked while profoundly declaring her art? ...''

Please L. Oik, these people are unsightly enough fully clothed. A live, naked specimen outside of a large vessel of formaldehyde would be a terrible sight to see with both intellectual and physical flab on view.

Jim

[Lord of the Fleas]

Carrying a tire in a busy urban intersection...

Hey - it could be a mattress ...

[Jeff Mauney]

I once saw a mime break his ankle when he accidentally stepped backwards into a street gutter. Turns out mimes can cuss like drunken sailors. Best performance art I ever saw.

[Hopp Singg]

“Is she all right?”

I should think the answer is obvious.

[Hopp Singg]

And if she will promise to bring her art performance to my own little town, I will promise to bring my dog to participate.

I was kinda disappointed no one in the video could be bothered, actually. Philistines.

[WTP]

So when I was a kid, if someone was being annoying we...including some adults, usually a coach...would say, "Why don't you go play in traffic?"

I never thought anyone would take such a suggestion seriously. Yet another thing I was wrong about.

[I sneeze in threes]

Is this what happens when they kick you out of Cirque du Soleil?

[Sue Sims]

Mind you, balancing on a tire, though not as tricky as doing the same thing on an exercise ball, does her core credit. I imagine that this is one step on the way to a major pole-dancing exhibition, which we can all look forward to.

Sam: I'm really worried that you're coming up with these fluent and convincing post-modern interpretations. Is there something you're not telling us?

[Robert of Ottawa]

Expounding upon intersectionality at an intersection. How cool is that?

[Adam]

Thomas Szasz is to blame for this unfortunate woman's anguish. His book The Myth of Mental Illness led directly to shuttering mental hospitals and turning out those incapable of self-care, self-insight, and improvement into the loving hands of "community based" mental health organizations. Today those who would have found shelter and meaning in the hospitals are the street people, the homeless, and performance artists.

[Burnsie]

Is this what happens when they kick you out of Cirque du Soleil?

Heh.

Coming soon: Cirque du Pneu with the world's least talented performers.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Is this what happens when they kick you out of Cirque du Soleil?

No, sacked by Bibendum, the Michelin Man for stealing his gig.

[Ron]

Hope she got a good grant. She's going to need something to live on.

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

Artists and entertainers like to say their work is "transgressive" and "challenging", but what happens when someone challenges them?

Did anybody else make it past this:

Speaking as a person of colour in an irredeemably racist culture, I’m sick of being accused of hypersensitivity by straight white men who are blind to their own privilege. What makes them believe that comedy should just be for them?

[Steve E]

...I’m sick of being accused of hypersensitivity...

Then perhaps she should stop being so hypersensitive--a state she readily demonstrates in this article.

[juliaeryn]

Passerby: 'is she alright?'
Camerawoman: (slightly irritated tone) 'Yes, she's fine.'
Passerby: 'Haha, ok thank you.' [LEAVES immediately]

Other passerby: (inadudible)
Camerawoman: (condescending tone): '...its a performance.'
Other passerby: (surprised) Oh! [LEAVES immediately]

SO, her art gives people the impression she is having some form of breakdown. When they are assured otherwise, people then LEAVE determining that the performance is NOTHING OF INTEREST.
No great artists are understood in their ortgeist.

[Darleen]

Speaking as a person of colour in an irredeemably racist culture

Then leave. Why would you stick around where nothing will ever change by your OWN admission?

The latest government guidelines would now seem to confirm that this kind of Islamophobia dressed up as humour should be subject to investigation. It simply isn’t good enough for comedians to cry “free speech” after every hateful joke, as though the laws that govern the rest of us don’t apply to them.

Ah! IOW you feel entitled to have the government shut down every person who doesn't genuflect to your views.

The problem is never the problem ... it's about power.

[gregale]

"Not actually knowing what postmodern means, I'll just BS like my life depends on it"

No one knows what postmodern means, especially the postmodernists.

[Chester Draws]

at some point, performance art becomes indistinguishable from mental illness

At some point?

Anyone who could make good performance art, is pretty much fully employed doing something lucrative. They'd be making movies, or have a living as a comic etc. Anyone who is so witless that "performance art" is what they produce isn't going to be able to make anything of worth.

I've seen any number of such pieces -- some in famous European galleries, so presumably the best. Not one of them has made me think anything other than "this is shit".

[David]

Passerby: ‘is she alright?’
Camerawoman: (slightly irritated tone) ‘Yes, she’s fine.’
Passerby: ‘Haha, ok thank you.’ [LEAVES immediately]
Other passerby: (inaudible)
Camerawoman: (condescending tone): ‘...it’s a performance.’
Other passerby: (surprised) ‘Oh!’ [LEAVES immediately]

Heh. As so often with these things, I’m not sure that the participants are aware of what it is their videos communicate.

[David]

One more time:

The pretence of intellectual heft and critical discernment is quite funny, given the unspoken rules of pretend artists and their pretend art. Like practically all of her fellow hustlers, Ms Schaefer tells us that she “investigates” and “questions” things, and presumably interrogates them; but despite this allegedly relentless curiosity, I doubt that any specific insight or profundity is ever conveyed to her audience, such as it is, via the art, such as it is. And of course, we’re not supposed to notice this, or notice the comical mismatch of arch rhetoric and inept flummery. And so, in order to feign discernment, one has to not discern any number of really obvious things.

Seemed apposite somehow.

[JuliaM]

"... I’m sick of being accused of hypersensitivity by straight white men ..."

I'm not a man. You're a hysterical little bitch.

There. That better?

[TomJ]

**I believe you islanders call them zehb-bra crossings

For fairly obvious reasons. Although it was only recently I learnt that pelican crossings drive their name from abbreviating pedestrian light controlled crossing. Not was I aware that the sort where the light controlling the pedestrian is on the same side as the user is technically a puffin crossing, for pedestrian user friendly intelligent crossing (the intelligent coming from the fact that they are fitted with sensors to ensure people are out of the carriageway before turning the traffic lights green) or that the variant that specifically caters for cyclists as well as pedestrians is a toucan crossing, because two can pass. I was aware that the signals controlling horse riders crossing roads is a pegasus crossing, but not that the prototype for all of these light controls was for some reason known as the panda crossing.

[David]

pelican crossings drive their name from abbreviating pedestrian light controlled crossing.

I’ve always said this place was a nourishing educational resource. I should get a grant. And a statue.

[Burnsie]

"... I’m sick of being accused of hypersensitivity by straight white men ..."

She does sound like a fun date.

[PiperPaul]

Where are all the bird puns? I'd have thought more would be on a lark with this opportunity.

[pst314]

pelican crossing...puffin...pegasus...panda

Dodo crossing: for performance "artists" and other mental defectives.

[Watcher In The Dark]

Is it fair to say that a person working at a lathe making left-handed widgets is performance art?

Maybe yes, maybe no, but at least there is something useful from their labours if nothing else.

[SumDumGuy]

The cop's carelessness exiting and entering traffic is what bothered me the most. In my city his lights would have been on in an instant and would have stayed on until he was safely in traffic.

[David]

The cop’s carelessness exiting and entering traffic is what bothered me the most.

Here I am, bringing you the finest in cutting-edge culture, the dizzying apex of human achievement, and all you can think about are traffic regulations.

[Squires]

Traffic regulations are the anchor upon which modern civilization is hanged... hung... on the sheetrock of white supremacy. Of course we care about them!

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...bringing you the finest in cutting-edge culture...

Nonsense, Miss Tsoli is purely derivative of the great transgender Russian performance artist, Sergei Balzflov whose piece was much more kinetic, but was itself derivative of the early Michelin ads.

[David]

And just think. Her “experimental writing” could be even better.

[Governor Squid]

Accusations of being a "prude" or a "killjoy" are tactics designed to silence warriors like Liam. Setting armed agents of Her Majesty's Government upon any comedian who would criticize or mock members of protected classes is just good manners.

Little wonder their arguments make no sense. The cognitive dissonance must be absolutely crippling.

[John D]

Instalanche!

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/322954/

[David]

Instalanche!

We need fresh towels, stat.

As we have company, I’ll dig out some earlier art coverage.

This item here, for instance.

And this one too.

I’m nothing if not generous.

[dicentra]

It only works if you imagine she's doing it ironically.

[Dwyprov]

I'm going on 68, don't know how many minutes I got left. Do know I just wasted 5.39 of them for no good reason.

[David]

Do know I just wasted 5.39 of them for no good reason.

You don’t feel ennobled by the high art on offer?

[Joe Cuba]

https://abc7ny.com/society/veteran-asks-for-100-cards-for-100th-birthday-gets-thousands/5159672/

Mission accomplished!

[DeepThought]

And I'm not joking. This is real insanity. The real world and its harsh punishments should you step too much out of line would keep you operating and sane in the real world. But since punishment (not to mention starvation) has been eliminated in the western world, our people are decaying into the adult children most millennials and leftists are today.

http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2019/02/laziness-leads-to-craziness.html

[Pogonip]

Hey, do they still have that English festival-I forget the town—where people chase a big wheel of cheese down a steep hill till they catch it or break both ankles, whichever comes first? This would seem a fertile field for performance art.

[Pogonip]

P.S. I am not now nor have I ever been Joe Cuba.

My dad, also a WW II veteran, was Mr. Cuba’s birthday twin.

[Hal]

Hey, do they still have that English festival . . . .

Complete with it's own website, this year occurring on May 27 . . .

[Darleen]

Laziness Leads to Craziness

Idle hands are the Devil's workshop.

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Attempting to Reach Equilibrium in Times of Dystopia

In an actual dystopia will the art be even worse?

Heh. It strikes me that the most dystopian thing visible in the video is Ms Tsoli’s conception of what constitutes art. The prevalence of such tat, in which aesthetics and accomplishment play no part, rather implies a cultural decline.

That.

[David]

That.

What’s notable is that such flummery isn’t just random incompetence. It’s quite uniform – eerily so - and is actively encouraged by our supposed betters, such that we, the lowly taxpayer, are expected to pay for it. Apparently, we should be thankful.

I think that’s what gives it an air of degeneracy.

[Jonathan]

Modern Greek art:

Ancient Greek art:

I'm torn as to which is better.

[Hal]

Ancient Greek art:

Accidental Greek art, blamed on the Gauls---Not the French, the Gauls.

[Baceseras]

Traffic regulations are the anchor upon which modern civilization is hanged... hung... on the sheetrock of white supremacy.

Plastic Hollow Wall Anchor (band name)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qngi_jSaXlI

...an old favorite

[WTP]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qngi_jSaXlI

...an old favorite

It really draws you in. Amusing at first, and surprisingly soothing, so I stuck around for a little while even after I got the point. I got all the way to 2:57 before I went mad. I'm rather impressed with myself. Of course since now that I'm rather insane, my sense of self satisfaction should be considered problematic.