Comments on: Roadside Observation

By: gremmie

gremmie — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 02:43:15 +0000

This is kind of late in the day but the baseball player in question is Gary Thomasson, who went over to Japan in 1981.
I don’t live in Japan but I have a 100 foot tall chimney outside my window with no factory attached (burned down). Does that count?

By: selena

selena — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 10:15:24 +0000

I love to burabura. And love to watch others burabura-ing. My favorite is the crusty old man of indeterminate age with no place special to be. You can spot him from his leathery squinting face and his hat, which is either a ball-cap style or perhaps newsboy. Splits his time between wandering the streets and gumming yaki-onigiri at the race track.

By: Darryl

Darryl — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 04:56:13 +0000

I don’t think there was a formal connection to Situationism, but with all the cues coming from Paris at the time – the French Nouvelle Vague, Oshima channeling Genet, for instance – I thought it was an apt parallel (and the original point of the piece). The more documented connection I think is with Fluxus. High Red were part of a loose confederation of “Anti-art” performance groups (Han-geijutsu) that included Neo Dada, Zero Dimension, and Group Ongaku.

By: W. David MARX

W. David MARX — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 04:07:07 +0000

I think we accidentally edited reference to the Situationists out of the piece, but yes, they were very aware it seems. Maybe Darryl can pipe in.

By: Jared

Jared — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 03:32:34 +0000

Interesting. I wonder if High Red Center was aware of the Situationists, who were doing something similar in Paris in the 60′s. Less concerned with finding art (however useless) than with using random paths to map the city.