Where Lyric Meets Science

Week 13: Betsy Damon

I’m sorry, but I’m still trying to figure out what makes Damon an artist.

She is, in essence, an activist who works with the health and safety of water systems in China.  She studies the industrialized regions of China and their pollutive effects on surrounding waters, and makes to restore the delicate balance.  

Damon, however, is a very neat individual.  She founded Keepers of the Waters, which combines scientists, artists, and regular citizens to brainstorm to create water treatment systems that are both functional and pretty.  It was begun in Chengdu, China.  She invited other artists to come perform dramatizing artworks regarding the pollution of the river, to raise awareness.  She does not sound like an artist to me, but instead an event planner and a successful group leader.  The Keepers of the Waters created a Living Water Garden, which acts as a treatment facility.  It is also, supposedly, a piece of Damon’s work.  You decide.  

The Living Water Garden is very pretty though, and I wonder, if Damon would consider working in other countries other than China with her Keepers of the Waters organization, to meet the same ends elsewhere? 

Week 13: Alix Lambert

Alix Lambert is an interesting cookie.  She tries to push the envelope of social norms and test people’s reactions to various offers.  She set out to marry and divorce as many people people as possible within 6 months.  She asked a stranger, a gay man, a straight woman, and a good friend.  All married her, and proceeded with the divorce. 

She also offered to tattoo people, advertising her amateur status.  She does this, and her other works, as a study on person-person interactions.  She addresses the intimacy of various relationships, though the relation may not always appear intimate.  She even created a punk band, Platipussy, to study the performer-fan relationship.  I think the ideas are interesting, and what she does is unusual, perhaps unconventionaly, but still kind of cool.

I wonder though, what other relationships are there to peruse, and how these might be done to the same effectiveness as the other works described? 

Week 13: China Adams

So it takes a lot to gross me out.  And first going through her stuff, it seemed a neat idea— not my sort of thing, but a neat idea.

China Adams explores death and what is left afterwards.  Her work discusses mortality by ensuring that part of her remains on earth, through the selling of pieces of her body that will enact immediately after her death.  She is “placing her bones” as Adams puts it.  This work, called “Contract of Sale”, ensures that her reputation stays on earth after she passes on.  She has also taken inventory of all her possessions, deemed many of them worth “burden status,” then covered each with a shroud and allowed people to buy them, not knowing what piece of China Adams’ life they were purchasing.  This is vaguely interesting— again, not my thing, but understandable.

 But then comes the food thing.  Her goal is to drink each of her friends’ and relatives’ blood, so that they will live within her.  She also had a friends’ lovehandles removed… then cooked and ate them.  To let her be closer to her friend.  I want to gag.

My question is simple: Has China Adams ever checked into a mental institution?