“Traffic humming in my ears, as my destination nears, goes the first line of the LAX song. It is followed by a fanfare of washed out language. Sun is laughing in the sky, ocean breeze rolls softly by. While washing ashore a wave of California clichés, like rolling hills, vista views, sandy beaches and beauty queens, the song lacks to credit LA’s less scenic sanctuaries. Following the mayhem of a weekend whose many incredibilities have just gone through the international news, the majority of the city’s leading politicians openly objects Trump’s travel ban, defending the city’s ambitions to protect unauthorized immigrants.”

“Make books not bombs, Hans Ulrich Obrist once said to them. So they do.”

“Cars crash throughout the story lines of drama and video games, to be watched from remote-controlled safety or steered with joysticks in technology’s remove. The world has watched Jackson Pollock, James Dean and Lady Di perish in wrecks. Reading about car crashes in the news, we empathise with their victims, yet their tragedies feel remote. We are “adepts of proximity without risk”, as Susan Sontag once put it, but strangely insatiable. Like junk food, we tend to consume tragedy in supersize portions while gaining nothing in substance.”

“Metz + Racine’s not so still still lifes proudly show a bit of leg. Seemingly slightly off-schedule, many capture the “right before” or the “right after.” Real suspense, they appear to argue, resides between an act and its imminent instance, between a particular moment and the point it just passed.”

“Back in the days, epic battles raged on MTV: Michael Jackson vs. Prince for King of Pop, Pepsi vs Coca Cola for the global soft drink empire. For all practical purposes Jackson struck a $5 million deal with PepsiCo that would shatter the record for celebrity endorsements and set the bar for every integrated marketing campaign to follow. While the King of Pop would demise slowly, the reality of brand marketing catched up all the quicker. ”

“We see blown-up plastic bodies, suggestive of pop art, or possibly, of porn: Hugyfot, one of the oldest and most renowned camera housing manufacturers, speaks of its products’ “sexy curves,” much like Mario Bellini once referred to his design of the Lexington typewriter that he offered Olivetti—purportedly with nude photographs interspersed in his presentation slides.”

“On the one hand, we have soft shapes and the sensual process of sanding sculptures by hand. On the other, the brutality her chainsaw blade. People have asked her to do performances with the machine. She refuses. And yet, the heavy tool has become the artist’s involuntary trademark. Claudia Chainsaw Comte. Apparently the image is too imposing to ignore.”

“Some products are designed for protest, like anarchy pins or the lock-on devices demonstrators use to attach themselves to buildings, bulldozers or train tracks. Sometimes form itself fights, in a less literal sense. Security features combat forgery. Functionalism famously fought against frills; then in turn, the Memphis Group’s glaringly grotesque furniture attacked functionality. Not particularly political, but still provocative and progressive, Memphis’ furniture was pretty much applied-arts punk; Instead of pleasing the eye, it poked into it with a surplus of color and wacky shapes.”