ChittahChattah Quickies
April 8th, 2009
- HERMENAUT: Fake Authenticity: An Introduction – Equaled in fake authenticity only by Restoration Hardware, which sells new-but-old-looking pencil sharpeners and fire irons to people who apparently want to live inside a catalog, The House of Blues doesn't bother to lacquer its walls with old Ebony magazine covers, like the recently deceased bluesman Junior Kimbrough did at his juke joint in Mississippi. Instead, Ackroyd & co. just bought Kimbrough's place as soon as he died and carved it up for cufflinks. That might not be exactly accurate, but it is how you feel when you step inside a HoB. They do sell "outsider art" cufflinks, though. Did you know that HoB has its own curator? who's aggressively acquired for that chain the world's largest collection of outsider art? A questionable category anyway, this kind of painting is freely mixed at the Harvard Square HoB with old signs advertising everything from shoeshines to churches, and faux-aged signs entreating you to "Have mercy & say yeah!" and directing you to the T-shirt display.
- Zara Logue's Contemporary Design class at University of Oregon – This semester's theme is Authenticity. I'll be giving a guest lecture (remotely) on April 29.
Tags:
authenticity, design, fake, guest, lecture, logue, oregon, philosophy, portigal, Portland, remote, telepresence, theory