I don't talk enough about Thomas Mulready's Cool Cleveland newsletter and website, which tackles real and difficult matters of culture and activism in a truly local way.
I admit it: I am something of a mercenary. Even though I have lived in the Cleveland area for a total of 22 of my 45 years and have been a regular participant in area media via print, radio, TV and the Internet, I have never really identified with Cleveland, nor deep down, do I feel it has ever really identified with me. I still have people come up to me and say "you're that guy from California," while my friends and relatives in California think of me as someone who has long since abandoned them. I guess I'm, psychologically, kind of stateless. I identify with the area sports teams - I love the Indians as much as I ever did the Dodgers, the Browns and Cavs less so - but I personally identify with the truly local - suburban Aurora - much more so than the city of Cleveland, where I have never lived and which is just kind of there.
But Thomas Mulready gets in there and makes things happen - he really seems to care what happens in the area - and he does things about it, unlike say, me, who just sits back and comments on things.
Check out this fascinating interview with "nudity artist" Spencer Tunick, who arrived in town last weekend to choreograph his latest installation of an estimated 1000 nude Clevelanders this Fri 6/26 at dawn "at a carefully guarded location":
- Spencer Tunick is a contemporary artist who creates installations of live nude figures, captured through arresting photography and video. Over the past 12 years, he's organized over 65 temporary site related installations throughout the United States and abroad, where his figures are grouped en masse to create visually stirring shapes. His works have grown in appreciation and recently were aquired by the Dakis Joannou Foundation Collection in Athens, Greece.
....What were you doing during the culture wars of the 90's?
I thought the culture wars were in the 80's with Andres Serrano. Back then I was more interested in basketball. As of the 90's, I'm working with the nude outdoors in the public space, feeling that the body is a dignified object that can complement the outside world, not degrade it. My only situation was in trying to work in New York in the 90's, and at the same time being celebrated in South America and Europe and Australia. And all the arrests were illegal, because in New York State, there's no law against making an art work nude, so my lawyer filed a federal lawsuit in New York. We won at every stage, so it went to the Supreme Court, and Justice Ginsberg looked at my work and decided that I could make my work on the street, and remanded the case back to the federal courts. So I was upheld and the city had to pay a fine and wasted a lot of the taxpayers' money. This was the same time that [New York Mayor Rudolph] Guiliani was running against [now Senator] Hillary Clinton, so it was very politicized. Now with so many horrible things coming up against the body: senseless, dumb pornography, killing... so many horrible things in the work, I think it's a good thing to work with the body.
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