Here’s an article against corporate infringement into the art car scene. It’s more invective because of it’s harsh title – which is just typical “journalism”. I heard a few discussions on this topic at the many events I was at. Mostly, the corporate cars don’t show for the quirky events and thus don’t effect the “counterculture vibe”. The parade is a media event, and I fully expect corporateness to show up for a 250,000 person crowd.
I heard one major complaint about the McDonald’s shoe visiting schools on Friday. It’s a reasonable complaint, though one not shared by all artists. The complaints about the Shoe’s stereo being too loud are much more common.
What humors me the most is the social elitism of the comments to the article on the Chron’s web site. (“It’s not art because I don’t like it.”)
Is commercialism driving off fun of the Art Car Parade?
A few say sponsors detract from the event’s counterculture vibes
By SARAH VIREN
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
May 13, 2007, 9:57PMPatrick Stanley exhausted his supply of souvenir hard hats an hour before Houston’s Art Car Parade started Saturday. Each bore the name of the construction company he works for, SpawMaxwell, just like his art car, a 1958 Edsel Pacer.
Well, actually News Corp, which also owns MySpace, offered an unsolicited bid of US$5B for Dow Jones & Co. That’s a cost of $60/share for a company that was in the low $30s/share.
“I don’t really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.” (Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, 1947, XIX, Sunday.)
560 lost: Some 560 pairs of combats boots are laid out to represent the more than 560 US troops killed since the start of the war in Iraq one year ago, at a memorial organized by anti-war groups to protest the first anniversary of the war in Iraq in front of the Federal Building in the Westwood section of Los Angeles. (AFP/Robyn Beck)