Mousemuseum, 1972

mousemuseum02
Originally uploaded by Sigorski.

Claes Oldenburg. Born in 1929 at Stockholm. The son of a Swedish Consul General, he came to Chicago in 1936. After finishing his studies at Yale University, New Haven, he started to work as a reporter. In 1952 he attended a course at the Chicago Art Institute, published drawings in several magazines and began to paint pictures influenced by Abstract Expressionism. In 1956 he moved to New York and came into contact with Jim Dine. In 1958 he met Alan Kaprow and took part in his Happenings. In 1958-59 he arranged his first sculptural, Neo-Dadaist assemblages of plaster and garbage soaked in striking colors. These led to his environments (The Street, The Store etc.). He also started at this time to make replicas of foods like hamburgers, ice-cream and cakes, which prepared the ground for his soft sculptures. In 1964 and 1968 he was represented at the Venice Biennale, and in 1968 and 1972 at the documenta "4" and documenta "5", Kassel. In 1972 he arranged his Mouse Museum. A comprehensive retrospective of his projects, documents and sketches was shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1969. He was given a retrospective in 1970 by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. From 1976 he collaborated on large-scale projects with Coosje van Bruggen, whom he married in 1977. He was represented at the documenta "6", 1977, and documenta "7", 1982, at Kassel. He was given a retrospective of his drawings in 1977 by the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and the Kunsthalle Tübingen. His environment Mouse Museum/Ray Gun Wing was arranged in 1979 at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. In 1983 he made his large sculpture of a toothbrush for the Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld. In 1984 he made his proposals for the large project The Course of the Knife for Venice, which was then shown in collaboration with the architect Frank O'Gehry at the Campo dell'Arsenale, accompanied by performances which he took part in himself. He then went on to collaborate with Gehry on other projects related to architecture, e.g. in Boston and Los Angeles. In 1989 the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, organized the exhibition Claes Oldenburg - Coosje van Bruggen, A Bottle of Notes and Some Voyages. (Bruggen, Coosje v. Claes Oldenburg: Mouse Museum / Ray Gun Wing.
Otterlo, Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, 1979.)

Other Mousetales

New Orleans Square. Club 33, A private club, in Disneyland, since 1967. Originally intended as a private facility where Walt
Disney could entertain park sponsors. Despite lingering rumors, the Trophy Room of Club 33 no longer houses hidden microphones and speakers, although they were indeed installed when the club was built. Their planned function was to allow
Walt Disney to eavesdrop on guests' conversations in the tiny audio control booth adjacent to the Trophy Room. The primary
intent of the speaker/microphone system was to allow Wally Boag star of Disneyland's "Golden Horseshoe Revue" to entertain Walt's club guests on special occasions by conversing with them through the mechanism of an audio-animatronic bird. The Trophy Room was also wired to support a variety of other audio-animatronic animals, such as raccoons, but these plans were never implemented.

Kind of Void p95-97

Like the column of light, the lake predates the geography. Originally it was a kind of void, a darker area in the dark room in Andy Gage's head that occasionally vomited out new souls. In the course of constructing the geography, my father tamed the void somewhat - he made resemble a body of water, which was better than having a gaping black hole in the landscape, and
he also learned how to call new souls, like me, out of it at will. But he never fully mastered it. Since the lake was still technically
its own entity, it was not completely outrageous that it should act of its own accord, and so my father chose not to worry about it when it did. And since he didn't worry about it, neither did I - but I was curious.

Weather Inside the Geography p95-97

I said that my father controlled the weather inside the geography. He did not control the mist - he didn't summon it, and he couldn't make it go away. In hindsight, it's clear that this should have been cause for concern, but because it was associated with the lake, rather than, say, the forest or the pumpkin field, my father chose to regard it as a harmless anomaly rather than a potential danger sign.

Inside the Geography p95-97

The map of the geography inside Andy Gage's head looks like this: The X at the bottom of the map marks the spot where i appeared, beside the column of light that is the conduit between inside and outside. The column of light touches down on the crest of a hill above the south shore of the lake; from it, a path curves west and north the lake's perimeter eventually splitting into three branches. The rightmost branch leads down to a boat dock on the western lakebank; the middle branch runs straight and level to the pumpkin field; and the left branch goes up another, broader hill to the house. The question of distances gets kind of metaphysical, and I will return to it presently, but let's just say for the moment that the length of the path from the column of light to the front door of the house appears to be about a mile.Colours, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations are all exactly the same as they are outside. The house looks and feels just like a real house; the hills, rocks, and trees just look like real hills, rocks, and trees. The only obvious difference is you, since when you're inside, you're not wearing the body - so depending on how tall your soul is, for instance, your eye level may be shifted up or down. The geography has a sky above it just like the real sky, with a sun, moon, and stars. The motions of these heavenly bodies are all controlled by my father, who for the most part keeps them synchronized with their realworld counterparts: generally, when it's day outside, it's day inside, and ditto for night. The geography also has weather - this, too, controlled by my father - which is definitely not in sync with realworld weather, or at least not real-world Pacific Northwest weather: day or night, the sky in Any Gage's head is almost always clear, and it never rains. Sometimes, around Christmas, my father will stage a brief snowstorm for Jake and the other kids.

Inside the Geography p95-97

insidethegeography
Originally uploaded by Sigorski.

Set This House in Order

setthishouse
Originally uploaded by Sigorski.

"Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls", 2003 by Matt Ruff. Published 2003 by HarperCollins Publishers.
Synopsis: “I suppose I should tell you about the house…The house, along with the lake, the forest, and Coventry, are all in Andy Gage’s head, or what would have been Andy Gage’s head if he had lived. Andy Gage was born in 1965 and murdered not long after by his stepfather…It was no ordinary murder: though the torture and abuse that killed him were real, Andy Gage’s death wasn’t. Only his soul actually died, and when it died, it broke in pieces. Then the pieces became souls in their own right, coinheritors of Andy Gage’s life…”

Andrew Gage was “born” just two years ago, called into being to serve as the public face of a multiple personality. While Andrew deals with the outside world, over a hundred other souls share an imaginary house inside his head, struggling to maintain an orderly coexistence: Aaron, the father-figure, who makes the rules; Adam, the mischievous teenager, who breaks them; Jake, the frightened little boy; Aunt Sam, the artist; Seferis, the defender; and Gideon, the dark soul, who wants to get rid of Andrew and the others and run things on his own. Andrew’s new coworker, Penny Driver, is also a multiple personality - a fact that Penny is only partially aware of. When several of Penny’s other souls ask Andrew for help, he reluctantly agrees, setting in motion a chain of events that threatens to destroy the stability of his house. Now Andrew and Penny must work together to uncover a terrible secret that Andrew has been keeping from himself…

The Hunting of the Snark

snark02
Originally uploaded by Sigorski.

The Hunting of the Snark

snark01
Originally uploaded by Sigorski.

The Hunting of the Snark

The Hunting of the Snark / Die Jagd nach dem Schnatz von Lewis Caroll, in Englisch und Deutsch; Philipp Reclam jun. Gmbh & Co Stuttgart; 1996. Titel der englischen Originalausgabe: "The Annotated Snark. The full Text of Lewis Caroll's Great Nonsense Epic" "The Hunting of the Snark"; New York; Penguin Book; 1962.

Fuller Brush Company

Fuller Brush Company
Originally uploaded by Sigorski.

Fuller Brush Company

On a cold, crisp winter day...New Year's 1906, a 21-year-old entrepreneur from Nova Scotia, Alfred C. Fuller, began an enterprise which has become known worldwide as The Fuller Brush Company. From a bench between the furnace and the coal bin in his sister's New England home, young Fuller set out to make, in his own words: "the best products of their kind in the world." Through the years, The Fuller Brush Company has grown from one man's fiber suitcase, filled with unique custom-made brushes, to an exciting collection of home/business care, and personal care products, all crafted with the same quality and precision that have made The Fuller Brush Company a name welcomed everywhere. Electric Fuller Brush Boy; p282 (Sewer Gas & Electric, by Matt Ruff)

Sewer, Gas & Electric

Sewer Gas & Electric by Matt Ruff: SF roller-coaster satirizing the horrors of our nascent technocracy. Set in New York city in the
year 2023, it features a huge cast of characters, including humans, androids and a mutant great white shark, all revolving around Harry Gant, a Donald Trump-style billionaire real estate developer who's building the world's tallest skyscraper, a "new Tower of Babel." Holding the many subplots together is Gant's ex-wife, Joan Fine, who sets out to investigate the murder of a Wall Street financier who had sought to topple Gant Industries and who was ostensibly beaten to death with a signed first edition of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. As Fine's research leads her through the history of the Walt Disney Co., Gant Industries and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, not to mention many digressions into Rand's theory of Objectivism. Ruff uses a cartoonist's palette in his portraits of everyone and everything: Told with breezy good humor, this exuberantly silly tale will find an audience among admirers of the day-glo surrealism of Steve Erickson and the tangled conspiracy theories of David Foster Wallace. Extract from Review: Publishers Weekly Link to this review

Sewer, Gas & Electric

sewer, gas & electric
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