Ryan

In the short excerpt "Art Which Can't be Art" written in 1986, Allan Kaprow talks briefly about what can be considered art, opposed to just everyday activities. He goes into the social aspects of how art is percieved as being mainly conventional, but he suggests that art is a part of everyday life. He uses brushing his teeth as an example. Some issues Kaprow talks about deals with the concept of art being judged based on its professional skill, creativity and what category of "art" it falls under etc. Kaprow suggests that the concept of simple actions such as brushing your teeth, is something important and worth considering. It seems that Kaprow percieves art as something of a mind body relationship, which spiritually enhances one self. So to take a piece of art and frame it makes it conventional art. But brushing your teeth ideally can give one the equal satisfaction and reward as any other art.

After reading this article, i think i can see where he is coming from. There has always been the debate dealing of what is and isn't real art. What Kaprow is going into is the concept and the feeling that art reflects and gives back to the individual, rather than just the direct visual and asthetic appeal it might give off. His tooth brushing example made for a good point because it reflected both an everyday activity as well as a mind-body union. The truth is, we spend most of our lives doing activities which are so repetitive we start to become unaware of the essence of each. I think it is artistic in itself by becoming totally aware of what we do in our everyday lives.

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My first idea is to post graphic pictures and ads of starving children in the stalls of the bathrooms in high-end fancy boutique restaurants. (the ones that charge a ridiculous amount of money for a tiny amount of food and all you pay for is the presentation and atmosphere).

Hopfully the people who eat at the resturants will see this and realize that as they are spending eccessive amounts of money on a resturant that makes miniscule amounts of food for the sake of tasting rather than fullfilling ones hunger, there are kids in other parts of the world who dont even have the luxury of eating that amount of food for free. I think that for the most part, the people who go to these resturants need the wake up call the most, because they are for the most part caught up in their own world and oblivious to outside problems. Hopfully they see how lucky they are to be able to eat at those kinds of resturants at their leisure, and mabye even take action upon it.

My second idea is to go around a number of gas stations in a certain area and stick either "out of order" signs or construction tape around each gas machine.

Hopefully of the bat, people will become alarmed, but will probably discover shortly it was a prank. It will probably mostly affect those who are running on empty. And after hoping from one station to another, hopfully they will become angry or fustrated, and after realizing it was a prank, see how dependent they are on their cars.