Larry Harvey, founder-director of The Burning Man Project, absurd propagandist Shepard Fairey, and comic-book artist Peter Bagge visit the Walker Art Center as part of Manufacturing (Dis)Content, a free, three-part series presented on Thursdays, February 24, March 2, and 16. Part of the Walker’s new Free Thursdays evening programming, the series examines artistic practices that resist the forces of commodification in today’s consumer society and sidestep the "lowest common denominator" mind-set that mainstream success normally requires. Manufacturing (Dis)Content
Thursdays, February 24, March 2, and 16
Free Larry Harvey: La Vie Bohème: Bohemian Values, Populist Politics, and the New Avant-Garde
Thursday, February 24, 7 pm, Free
Walker Auditorium
The Burning Man Project, a temporary city constructed annually in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, attracted a population of more than 23,000 participants in 1999. Now in its 10th year, this enormous, ephemeral metropolis is a singular public art event that gives new meaning to the phrase "site-specific installation." Founder-director Larry Harvey discusses Burning Man (www.burningman.com) as a populist extension of San Francisco’s underground art scene, addressing several of the key concepts that define this noncommercial experiment in the production of new culture: creativity versus commodification, the social context of creative effort, and the relationship of "outsider" art to the institutionally sanctioned mainstream. Shepard Fairey: Andre the Giant Has a Posse
Thursday, March 2, 7 pm, Free
Gallery 8 Restaurant
Shepard Fairey is a modern day trickster, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, and the originator of the worldwide Andre the Giant Has a Posse sticker campaign. Simultaneously utilizing and subverting advertising techniques--the sticker consists of a stark black-and-white image of Andre the Giant’s face, a universally identifiable logo for a product that doesn’t exist--the work has grown over the past 10 years from a subversive private joke among Fairey and his skateboarding friends into a global network of anti-consumer activists. Fairey speaks about his role in society as an absurd propagandist and his work as an experiment in phenomenology, described by Heidegger as "the process of letting things manifest themselves." Fairey is co-founder of Black Market Design in San Diego, California. Peter Bagge: Hate Comics
Thursday, March 16, 7 pm, free
Gallery 8 Restaurant
The work of Seattle-based comic-book artist Peter Bagge, like that of his contemporaries Daniel Clowes, Julie Doucet, and Chris Ware, occupies a unique cultural gray area at the end of the millennium. On one hand, the comics art form in recent years has gained ground in the struggle to achieve respect as a viable medium, garnering serious critical attention (such as Roger Sabin’s Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels) and in-depth artistic analysis (such as Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics). On the other hand, comics are still considered by many to be the ultimate example of lowbrow, juvenile, vacuous entertainment. Bagge, whose magnum opus Hate has been optioned for production as an animated series by HBO, MTV, and Fox, speaks about the state of the art form and the tension that exists between underground integrity and mainstream success. For information, call the Walker box office, 612.375.7622 (voice); 612.375.7585 (Touchtone Device for the Deaf). Patrons with special needs are asked to call two weeks in advance. Manufacturing (Dis)Content is made possible with support from The Bush Foundation.
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