Feet First (Prima i piedi) (1990), Martin Kippenberger's four foot high wooden sculpture of a crucified frog in loincloth, brandishing a mug of beer and an egg, has been at the center of an escalating dispute since it went on exhibit in May 2008 at the newly opened Museion in Bolzano, Italy.

Museum officials have insisted on their institutional autonomy and freedom of expression, while various clergy, government functionaries and Vatican spokesmen, even Pope Benedict XVI himself, have denounced it as provocative and blasphemous, and demanded its removal. To support this there have been various actions, including a hunger strike by a local politician, a petition signed by 10,000 citizens, and a protest march.

In response, the frog was moved from the entrance hall to the third floor, and at one point partially obscured by newspaper stories about the controversy. But apparently nothing short of its total removal will be acceptable to its critics.

Released after six days in jail, artist James Powderly and other activists for Tibetan rights were deported from China as the Olympics closing ceremonies were concluding on Sunday night in Beijing.

As reported on the Students for a Free Tibet website, the Chinese government, bowing to international pressure, released the detainees earlier than expected, in an effort to defuse bad publicity that had cast a shadow on the Olympic games.

The first installment of The Art Critic, a novel set in the New York art world and centering on a fifty-something critic for a weekly news magazine, recently appeared on Artnet. The book will serialize online over the next 24 weeks. It is written by Peter Plagens, painter, writer and art critic for Newsweek.

This comment was originally posted on an Artworld Salon thread on the book.

The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing concluded today without experiencing any major disruptions. This despite an announcement by the Chinese government that they had set aside designated protest zones, and even furnished these with basic accommodations for the protesters.

Taken from my postings on the Artworld Salon thread Considering “Tino Sehgal”, with the addition of images found online.

First post:

The artist’s refusal to create a physical object, even the photo document of a performance, is an implicit critique of the status quo, a dogmatic assertion of non-compliance. As Andras notes, the significance of this gesture depends entirely on the prevailing power structure, on what in fact is being rejected. It can be a potent argument when aimed at a corrupt, repressive political regime that would be quick to censor the content in any case.

NYC Agrees to Pay 52 Antiwar Protesters $2 Million

The City of New York has agreed to pay $2 million to a group of fifty-two protesters who were swept up in a mass arrest during a peaceful antiwar protest outside the headquarters of the Carlyle Group in 2003. We speak with the lead plaintiff in the case, Sarah Kunstler.

While my room in "the first crackhouse on the left" isn't quite this gloomy (or big) and there are no pets to welcome me home, it's just about as bare. Buster Keaton stars in this clip from Beckett's 1964 screenplay, "Film":

No word from the American artist 24 hours after being taken into Chinese custody
Powderly was in Beijing to unveil a project made with pro-Tibet activist group

Sheffield's famous Tinsley cooling towers will be demolished over the August Bank Holiday weekend, energy giant 'E.On' has announced, despite thousands of people had signed petitions to save the towers, which can be seen by motorists who use the M1.
The general publics efforts were so determined that they even filed for the two iconic concreate cooling towers to be classed as a piece of public art. This really could have worked, as they are the Sheffield equivilent to the Newcastle Angel of the North. It doesn't appear that there's much more that we can do. Eon are adamant that the towers have to come down, and have been unwilling to consider anything else all along. Nothing that we have done has changed that, not even the TV program on channel 4 or the radio interview on BBC Radio 2. The council haven't got the ambition or vision to see that these towers could be icons, that they could attract millions of people. Unless there's some sort of divine intervention, then, it looks like the cooling towers will disappear.