Check out the fins on this motor ... Seth Weiner's Terranaut Project
The Art Newspaper - the closest thing to a trade paper that the beau monde will admit to having - has sponsored a new award. As if there weren't enough funds earmarked for encouraging pointless practices, I hear you splutter.
And splutter you well might, for the new award is named after and inspired by Percival Bartlebooth, the bewildered hero of Geoges Perec's Life: A User's Manual, who dedicates his life to a hugely complex but entirely useless artistic process. The Bartlebooth award is precisely concerned with celebrating that which pushes at the boundaries of uselessness, improbability and, well, art writes Guy Dammann.
And good for them, I say. The world would be a poorer place were it not for the Bartlebooth Awards. For who else would be there to celebrate the fearless futility of Seth Weiner's The Terranaut Project, which meandering marvel of engineering allows a goldfish to travel at will across dry land?
Or where would the richly-deserved plaudits for Mungo Thomson's painstakingly pointless compilation of the applause preserved on Bob Dylan's live albums? Equally, what kind of a world would it be if we couldn't see justice done to the intimate inanity of Kathe Izzo's The Look of Love, in which the artist schools an unsuspecting public in the art of gazing lovingly. Clearly, these meaningless masterpieces should be praised from the hilltops.
You may scoff - indeed, I hope you will, for nothing pleases the Grand Vulture more than the frenzied squabbling from which his victuals are furnished - but the point, of course, is that if art wasn't concerned somehow with uselessness then it wouldn't be art. After all, if we knew what the point of art was - to instruct, to imitate, to insult (all these mottos have been flung and failed to stick) - then we would probably stop wanting to make it or watch it. And then where would we be? Jobless, for one.
If you know of any other similarly elaborate but empty gestures, The Art Newspaper would be glad to hear from you. Since this year's nominees have already been chosen, this might seem a rather pointless gesture but, well... you're getting the hang of it, aren't you?
