It was $6,000?

2009 Steph Greegor:

"Stickin’ it to the man is something 27-year-old Matthew McCormack takes seriously.

The 2006 Ohio State University grad takes pride in using his glass art to elicit social chatter about the institutions that govern our society. And earlier this year, McCormack was presented with the opportunity to create what he described as a particularly “scathing” piece.

The opportunity came when his $6,000 sculpture This is not a pipe. after Magritte became the subject of complaints after being placed on display at a Huntington Bank in the Ohio State campus area.

McCormack said he originally was able to place the sculpture at the bank due to an arrangement under which the institution set aside a pedestal for the display of art by Ohio State students.

“No one had used the pedestal for a year and a half,” he said. “They were interested in having work there, and they were waiting for someone to bring them art. So I got in touch with them.”

McCormack said he understood the controversial nature of the sculpture—which resembled a marijuana pipe and even went so far as to have glass marijuana nuggets inside the “bowl”—and he said as much when he approached the bank. Still, the managers remained interested in displaying it, he said.

“The manager said to put everything in the display,” he said. “But if there was a problem, he would take it down.”

McCormack said all was good for about a week. Then he got the call from the bank telling him a customer had complained, and the piece needed to come down.

Huntington Bank officials did not return phone calls seeking comment.

“People at the bank had no problem with any of the work—it was just the customers that had an issue with it,” he said. “You know, whatever the customer wants.”

That didn’t sit well with McCormack. He said the fact that a bank would cave in to its customers for the sole purpose of making money is a microcosm of society-at-large, which focuses on cash, commerce and the almighty consumer in lieu of encouraging individuality and freedom to express one’s ideas.

“The issues that were at play with the pipe at the bank are the same in society,” he said.

The glass pipe’s ouster from the bank was not a complete loss, however, as McCormack used it as an opportunity to replace the piece with a work he sees as even more controversial: a display of glass goblets that he calls Our Hegemon.

Each goblet is engraved with the name of an institution like the Federal Reserve, Consider Biking or media outlets, as well as prominent court cases. Its purpose, he said, is to force viewers to ascertain exactly which “man” rules their socially complacent world while also celebrating the rebel-like organizations that defy “him.”

“A lot of the issues we have in our society have to do with how corporations can have so much power and limited accountability,” he said. “Which goblet do you choose to drink from?”

“Do you watch Fox and buy into fear culture? Or do you look at promoting positive change in your community? You can’t have a direct immediate influence over politics or culture, but you can have a very visible effect in your community by where you choose to focus your energy.”

McCormack said his desire to stimulate political conversation through art may stem from his father, a high school English teacher.

“He read a lot of books, and we talked about them—about different ideas, and that there’s different ways to approach an issue,” he said. “He showed me how things exist now because of small modifications (made over a period of) a thousand years.

His father also took him to the Cleveland Museum of Art, McCormack said, and taught him that work displayed in such a place is held up as significant. To make a piece interesting, his father told him, it must have cultural significance.

Sometimes art simply functions as “something colorful to enhance your life,” McCormack said. “But sometimes you need the work to have content that is social or political to actualize change. That’s the most important.”

McCormack’s earlier piece, This is not a pipe, has found a temporary home at Contra Culture, a shop at 2209 N. High St. Meanwhile, Our Hegemon apparently has gone over better with Huntington customers than its predecessor, as it remains on display at the bank at 1928 N. High St. in the campus area.

“I just want to cultivate a greater understanding of the culture we live in and hopefully to raise awareness of local arts organizations,” McCormack said of the piece. “People that want to make a difference…can actualize change through participation in organizations that already exist.”

“There’s good and bad, and where you choose to focus your energy is the cup you choose to drink from.”

Greegor, Steph. "Fighting the system one wine goblet at a time."The Other Paper. Columbus, OH. posted

Thursday, June 25, 2009 9:30 AM EDT. website accessed June 27, 2009. http://www.theotherpaper.com/articles/2009/06/25/arts/doc4a4378d1ad0fb548982332.txt

1985 Hakim Bey:

"ART SABOTAGE STRIVES TO be perfectly exemplary but at the same time retain an element of opacity--not propaganda but aesthetic shock--apallingly direct yet also subtly angled-- action-as-metaphor.

Art Sabotage is the dark side of Poetic Terrorism--creation- through-destruction--but it cannot serve any Party, nor any nihilism, nor even art itself. Just as the banishment of illusion enhances awareness, so the demolition of aesthetic blight sweetens the air of the world of discourse, of the Other. Art Sabotage serves only consciousness, attentiveness, awakeness.

A-S goes beyond paranoia, beyond deconstruction--the ultimate criticism--physical attack on offensive art-- aesthetic jihad. The slightest taint of petty ego-icity or even of personal taste spoils its purity & vitiates its force. A-S can never seek power--only release it.

Individual artworks (even the worst) are largely irrelevant- -A-S seeks to damage institutions which use art to diminish consciousness & profit by delusion. This or that poet or painter cannot be condemned for lack of vision--but malign Ideas can be assaulted through the artifacts they generate. MUZAK is designed to hypnotize & control--its machinery can be smashed.

Public book burnings--why should rednecks & Customs officials monopolize this weapon? Novels about children possessed by demons; the New York Times bestseller list; feminist tracts against pornography; schoolbooks (especially Social Studies, Civics, Health); piles of New York Post , Village Voice & other supermarket papers; choice gleanings of Xtian publishers; a few Harlequin Romances--a festive atmosphere, wine-bottles & joints passed around on a clear autumn afternoon.

To throw money away at the Stock Exchange was pretty decent Poetic Terrorism--but to destroy the money would have been good Art Sabotage. To seize TV transmission & broadcast a few pirated minutes of incendiary Chaote art would constitute a feat of PT--but simply to blow up the transmission tower would be perfectly adequate Art Sabotage. If certain galleries & museums deserve an occasional brick through their windows--not destruction, but a jolt to complacency--then what about BANKS? Galleries turn beauty into a commodity but banks transmute Imagination into feces and debt. Wouldn't the world gain a degree of beauty with each bank that could be made to tremble...or fall? But how? Art Sabotage should probably stay away from politics (it's so boring)--but not from banks.

Don't picket--vandalize. Don't protest--deface. When ugliness, poor design & stupid waste are forced upon you, turn Luddite, throw your shoe in the works, retaliate. Smash the symbols of the Empire in the name of nothing but the heart's longing for grace."

Bey, H. "Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism." 1985. website accessed June 29, 2009. http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz1.html#labelArtSabotage. From Heremetic.com: "CHAOS: THE BROADSHEETS OF ONTOLOGICAL ANARCHISM was first published in 1985 by Grim Reaper Press of Weehawken, New Jersey; a later re-issue was published in Providence, Rhode Island, and this edition was pirated in Boulder, Colorado. Another edition was released by Verlag Golem of Providence in 1990, and pirated in Santa Cruz, California, by We Press. "The Temporary Autonomous Zone" was performed at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, and on WBAI-FM in New York City, in 1990."

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