Readers may recall our last encounter with Extensions: the Online Journal of Embodiment & Technology. Contributors to this publication include that mistress of mangled language, Professor Caroline Guertin, and Headlong Dance Theatre, whose Thrash: Physical Responses to the Bush Administration is forever seared into our memories. Another, no less daunting, contributor is Bettina Camilla Vestergaard, a Danish artist whose work “explores how collective identity and personal narrative engage one another using a variety of mediums.” Vestergaard’s artistic approach is described, by herself, as

Conceptual and research based. She works with photo, video, sound, drawing and installation. Her latest projects concern identity and gender with a focus on how this is constituted in public space.

The Online Journal of Embodiment & Technology is no doubt honoured to host a Vestergaard original titled Free Speech on Wheels, Let Your Opinion Roll, and which takes the form of

Intervention in public space, writings on car, photos and video.

I can tell you’re intrigued. Vestergaard obliges us with an account of how this “intervention in public space” came to pass:

I had been awarded a stipend from the Swedish government that enabled me to live and work in L.A. for 6 months.

But of course. And why not? Artists do endure hardship for the betterment of all mankind.

I had high expectations of the city’s complex cultural diversity, so it was quite frustrating that my first three months primarily consisted of passing time in quite residential Hollywood, sitting alone in my car, shopping and getting fuel for yet another round.

As I said, hardship.

I had a feeling of involuntarily being trapped in a fixed pattern that repeated itself: like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, my life had begun to revolve around itself, slowly but surely reducing my mental activity to a purposeless series of meaningless events. I conceived Free Speech on Wheels as a means of short-circuiting this experience.

For the betterment of mankind.

The basic idea was to muddle the barrier between public and private, by creating a space where the many and varied identities of L.A.’s communities could be expressed. I began by parking my car where a large group of people were wandering about and proceeded to put up a sign with the following text: “Free Speech on Wheels – Let your opinion roll.”

Of course some artistic interventions need a little nudge:

In order to kick-start the process, I asked the first volunteers the question: “What does being an American mean to you?” I received a lot of different responses depending where I had parked. For example, there was intense writing activity during a downtown student demonstration and at Earth Day, while it was absolutely zero at the Santa Monica Beach promenade.

Fortunately, things soon picked up dramatically.

A while ago, I posted some extracts from Alvaro Vargas Llosa’s article on Ernesto “Che” Guevara:

In April 1967, speaking from experience, he summed up his homicidal idea of justice in his Message to the Tricontinental: “Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective and cold-blooded killing machine”… In a letter to his mother in 1954, written in Guatemala, where he witnessed the overthrow of the revolutionary government of Jacobo Arbenz, he wrote: “It was all a lot of fun, what with the bombs, speeches, and other distractions to break the monotony…”

With the above in mind, readers may be interested in Ted Balaker’s short film on the suckers who fellate this “social justice” icon.

“Rock and roll as well as jazz was what they called ‘imperialist music’… He hated artists, so how is it possible that artists still today support the image of Che Guevara?” Paquito D’Rivera.

Related: Harry’s Place versus defiant fellators, the chic of concentration camps.

(h/t, Daimnation!) 

Snowball gun. // Photographs of Antarctica. // How to Build an Igloo. (1951) // The Clangers build a pipe organ. // How to make wine in prison. “An odd burning sensation accompanies the first sip.” (h/t, Coudal) // Water pipes. // Monstrous yacht. // Self-assembling machines. // The geometry of beauty. // Ana Serrano’s cardboard sculptures, including Cartonlandia. // Watchmen montage. Rorschach, Moloch, Nixon! // Desirable goggles. // The American Widescreen Museum. // Low-cost video object manipulation. // Fun with “bullet-time”. // What’s a turbaconducken? (h/t, Daimnation!) // Head wipes. (h/t, PooterGeek) // A Photograph of Jesus. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Les 5 De l’Harmonica.

Snowflakes photographed by Kenneth Libbrecht.

More. How to photograph snow.

Her name is Jessica and she’s fond of coffee.  

I know, I know. Now you all want one. Via Maggie’s Farm.