Japanese love hotels go out of their way to satisfy the most outlandish fetish: some rooms offer the feeling of being inside a subway carriage, a class room, or a Hello Kitty SM room, others locks you into an alien abduction nightmare (/dream). Ai Hasegawa, second year student in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art in London, proposes to close loving couples into an even more extraordinary fantasy. Her Extreme Environment Love Hotel simulates impossible places to go such as an earth of three hundred million years ago, or the surface of Jupiter by manipulating invisible but ever-present environmental factors, for example atmospheric conditions and gravity continue ]]> tag:www.we-make-money-not-art.com,2012://2.10901 2012-01-31T10:14:50Z 2012-02-05T10:36:00Z Regine

"People who are comfortable with eating meat, should be equally comfortable with killing animals." Because he is interested in the ethics and dilemmas of eating meat, John O'Shea is looking into schemes to achieve a more compassionate meat consumption. Since 2008, the artist has been working on Meat Licence Proposal. Under this law proposal, citizens willing to buy or consume a certain type of meat would need to obtain a licence to do so first. The only way to acquire the licence is to slaughter the animal yourself continue ]]> tag:www.we-make-money-not-art.com,2012://2.10900 2012-01-30T08:11:09Z 2012-01-31T16:37:56Z Regine

A few months ago, I read there was an exhibition of photos by McCullin at Tate Britain. I thought "That one can wait, it's going to for ages and everybody knows the work of the award-winning war photographer anyway." That was very presumptuous of me. I finally went to see the show and it is now clear that i had underestimated the impact his images would have on me. Especially his portrayal of the homeless living around London from the late 1960s to the '80s continue ]]> tag:www.we-make-money-not-art.com,2012://2.10899 2012-01-27T15:03:50Z 2012-01-30T16:31:33Z Regine

With HORTUS, the architects from ecoLogicStudio are inviting the public to become cyber-gardeners and "invent new protocols of urban biogardening." There's a bright green carpet on the floor and hundreds of intravenous-style bags are suspended above our heads. The bags are in fact photo-bioreactors and they form a 'greenhouse' that hosts nine different species of algae, from chlorella to algae found in London's canals. Visitors can blow into flexible plastic tubes, fostering the growth of the algae with their carbon dioxide and activating the oxygen production continue ]]> tag:www.we-make-money-not-art.com,2012://2.10898 2012-01-25T07:47:52Z 2012-01-27T19:26:05Z Regine

The Finnish artist is the only person i've heard about who was actually arrested for pretending to guillotine a cheap Ronald Mc Donald statue. With the help of a friend, i got in touch with Jani Leinonen and bombarded him with questions about the beggars signs he's been exhibiting at the Venice Biennale, his crazy sexed-up versions of cereal boxes for children, his successful attempts at selling contemporary art works by the bulk as if they were vegetables and of course i was curious about the aftermath of the Ronald affair continue ]]> tag:www.we-make-money-not-art.com,2012://2.10896 2012-01-22T11:18:08Z 2012-01-25T19:18:05Z Regine

The culture of green tech is a timely publication. 2009 saw plethora of festivals, exhibitions and conferences dedicated to sustainability, 'greener planet' and ecology. I attended so many of them i ended up turning into a cynical eco-phobic. The following year, culture moved to other issues but the relevance of an artistic reflection on green tech is as high as ever. The magzine proposes an intelligent, critical view that goes beyond the monolithic 'green is beautiful' moto and looks into the dilemma and contradictions of green tech continue ]]> tag:www.we-make-money-not-art.com,2012://2.10894 2012-01-17T16:13:41Z 2012-01-22T18:09:54Z Regine

The press view for the Samsung Art+ Prize at BFI Southbank in London dragged me out of bed earlier than usual today. I don't know if the prize is the UK's first digital media art competition as it claims to be, but it is remarkably good. The selection of artworks at least. I'm far less enthusiastic about the way it is exhibited continue ]]> tag:www.we-make-money-not-art.com,2012://2.10893 2012-01-15T16:24:33Z 2012-01-17T20:57:08Z Regine

A wire brush spins around randomly, threatening your open-toe sandals. A motion activated vacuum pump sucks out the air from a sealed gallery space: the longer the viewers remain inside, the less air for them to breathe. A cobble stone is rotating on a rope. The sole purpose of that kettle is to spread red acrylic paint on your shoes. An electric fence used to control livestock on farms criss-crosses the path that leads to an art gallery or the bar. Elsewhere a randomly activated tripwire awaits visitors... continue ]]> tag:www.we-make-money-not-art.com,2012://2.10895 2012-01-13T17:05:13Z 2012-01-15T21:09:52Z Regine

The work of 31 photographers are part of the show. You can never go wrong with the likes of Diane Arbus, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Lee Friedlander, Martin Parr, Thomas Struth Tobias Zielony, Thomas Demand, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Wolfgang Tillmans and Jeff Wall. Most of the works exhibited are jaw-dropping. However, i now have the feeling that i have seen this kind of exhibition one time too many continue ]]> tag:www.we-make-money-not-art.com,2012://2.10892 2012-01-10T09:12:20Z 2012-01-13T21:23:46Z Regine

Yesterday evening i went to Foto8 in London again for the screening of How to Start a Revolution, a documentary tracing the global influence of Gene Sharp's work. Sharp believes that non-violent struggle has a greater chance of success than violent resistance, because violence is typically the most powerful weapon used tyrannical regimes and they will always have the upper hand. His booklet From Dictatorship to Democracy provide a list of 198 "non-violent weapons", including mock awards, alternative communication system, wearing of symbols, pray-in, boycott of elections, withdrawal of bank deposits, consumers' boycott, renouncing honours, etc. continue ]]> tag:www.we-make-money-not-art.com,2013://2.10882 2012-01-04T14:24:16Z 2012-01-10T22:24:23Z Regine

Weaponized Architecture is an examination of the inherent instrumentalization of architecture as a political weapon; research informs the development of a project which, rather than defusing these characteristics, attempts to integrate them within the scene of a political struggle. The proposed project dramatizes, through its architecture, a Palestinian disobedience to the colonial legislation imposed on its legal territory continue ]]> tag:www.we-make-money-not-art.com,2012://2.10834 2012-01-03T12:58:20Z 2012-01-04T19:56:46Z Regine

It took me longer than most to discover the work of Anri Sala but once i looked into it, i started seeing his work everywhere. A few months ago, i was invited to the Absolut Art Award in Stockholm to see some of his videos, attend a screening with popcorn of 1395 Days without Red and interview the artist. A few weeks after, Anri Sala had a solo show at the Serpentine Gallery in London. The show is now closed. I've waited far too long to write about Anri Sala's work continue ]]> tag:www.we-make-money-not-art.com,2011://2.10887 2011-12-31T14:04:33Z 2012-01-03T19:56:02Z Regine

I like GAMERZ because it's eclectic, because it makes me discover plenty of artists i had never heard about before but also because it reminds me that festivals should be left more often in the hands of artists. They take risk, follow their whim, trust other artists barely out of the academy, and care little about sticking to genres and formulas continue ]]> tag:www.we-make-money-not-art.com,2011://2.10755 2011-12-27T15:12:28Z 2012-01-01T15:57:39Z Regine

What roles can art and activism play in a post-Fordist society of the spectacle? Can activist art effect real change? Art & Activism in the Age of Globalization asks these and other pressing questions facing contemporary activist art, through case studies by established artists and filmmakers as well as emerging voices. It investigates issues of urban activism and the activism of anonymous networks, giving special consideration to the effects of the War on Terror upon the activist agenda continue ]]>