Dirty Job

Two interesting Banksy-esque artists who work with the unnatural canvas that mankind has stretched over the world.

Party Games

"Party Games" isn't an act of hate or malevolence. Its about the choices made for the sake of winning the 2008 presidential campaign.




Party Games
Dartboard, Dart, Appropriated Photo
Matthew Thomas Cianfrani
2008

Bored Again

I was at once inspired by a photo of a friend's dad and bored. My grandfather was in the military, but I think he got out on the old "bad-heart" card...
p.s. I know this isnt very good, but if you squint your eyes it works.

Trauma

Let's talk about yesterday. Aside from a few structural errors, all went splendidly. Around 8:00 am I had finished the final details on the last of four dummies, designed to look like terrorists who were a little down on their luck. I started installing them in their destined locations (a sidewalk on
36th and walnut street) around 8:15; first with an oil drum I'd appropriated from behind an Indian restaurant. For the last month my studio has been smelling like samosas. While I was carrying these life size figures out on to the street, the construction workers from the building next door were shouting out things like, "hey, he works for me" and "get him back to work". After I placed the second figure down, a police officer from across the street called me over and asked me what was going on. His point, and he was right, is that they looked a little "suspicious". I gave him my ID and my cell phone, told him they needed to be up at least until my professor saw them. The officer contacted his Lieutenant, who showed up and was incredibly amicable, cooperative, and as open to the idea of Freedom of Speech that this nation so proudly boasts. He called his superior, and ensured me that everything would be fine, and that there should not be any serious issues.
So after the last piece was installed, I sit back, and let the day unfold. The amount of traffic on the sidewalk varied through out the day, but consistently had a onlookers responding to the pieces, from either across the street or through the portal that these forms created. There was generally a positive reaction the men, people walked away saying how "cool" they were, and wondering where they came from. A gang of MFA students came to inspect them thoroughly as if they were critiquing something in a Chelsea gallery, yet the gallery was really the street. People filled the man with the Dunkin Donuts coffee cup with coins and someone even slipped a dollar in there, as if to express their enjoyment or approval of the works. The American mindset of having to pay for something that causes you joy is so well ingrained that people felt compelled to pay without even being asked to. And what does it say about society when a privileged upper middle class art student with nothing at stake but his pride can compel people to give him money on the street without even intending to?
I think what shook me the most, were the people who didn't even acknowledge or engage the piece. Either they were too caught in their own fears of the urban setting, or they were completely oblivious to the pieces existence (maybe the alarming abundance of destitution in Philadelphia rendered them desensitized, or maybe their own needs consume 100% of their attention 100% of the time ). Either way, the point was truly made for me in those moments. Are we too afraid for our own selfish reasons to pursue change? Or are we not even aware that change needs to happen?
The day wore on, responses stayed positive, people kept stopping to take photos with their camera-phones. All seemed well and yet I was also asking myself, so what now? Well the universe responded in the form of motorcycle officer Pugliese (nice South Philly name to accompany a nice South Philly attitude). As I was coming back from a class, I noticed him snooping around, and questioning civilians who stopped to check out the piece. I blew it off, took some photos, and went inside. Passing through the hall on my way to my studio I noticed there were more cops gathering around. He must have called in backup. I found myself a nice perch in one of the architecture studios that looked over the street, and watched as Julie (the head of my department) diploma-sized with the officers. Right then Donna, Julie's assistant, called me to tell me that Julie was talking to the cops, and that I needed to go outside. I took a deep breathe and made my way outside.
Officer Pugliese was a short man, and seemed to have a McCain complex. He claimed a complaint had been filed against the piece, and that he had seen a woman get startled and cross the street. I won't go into the fact that people are spooked by homeless people everyday, but I am more concerned with the legitimacy of this "anonymous complaint" about a piece of work that seemed to truly offend no one but this power tripping biker cop. I told him to ask his superiors about the situation, but he refused and told me that a garbage truck was on its way to dispose of the work. I didn't see the point in fighting any longer, and I didn't see getting arrested being an important part of what I set out to do. It had a good run, and this ending seemed like an appropriate one.
So its the now the day after, the piece got some coverage in a news paper, that as always, got the facts all wrong, and the photo was pretty terrible too. I am grateful for the attention though, and I accomplished what I set out to in the first place; re-spark the life of overpassed issues.



*here's a film! Its long, and meant to be on a gallery wall along with the pieces themselves. I'm trying more and more these days to give away the process, and make my work more transparent....
**i ended up not using the dynamite in the public context, but they will be there in the gallery

BIG JOHN!

So I just came across this thanks to my roommate M Ro. I still can't grasp that this is real; its so well done, and over the top that it seems like a satire.....but its not!

Post Trauma

For about three weeks now, I've been working on an installation piece that deals with a some what provocative subject. The idea surfaced as a response to a resultant shift of interest in given topics of discourse thanks to a shift in media (media being the various "news" outlets) interests. We as a culture seem to be most interested in sensational events that capture our over saturated short attention spans with predictions, or at least insinuations, of apocalyptic doom. Issues are treated as a flavor of the month, and get passed over before they are resolved. China is the new Middle East, Cancer is the new AIDs, Georgia is the new Darfur is the new Tibet, Gay Rights is the new Immigrant Rights is the new Women Rights is the new Black Rights is the new Native American Rights, and Wall Street is the new National Security/ Iraq/ Afghanistan. Okay, so that is a gross generalization for explanation purposes, but let me present it this way;

Gay Equality (not resolved)
Immigrant Equality (not resolved)
Woman Equality (not resolved)
Black Equality (not resolved)
Economic Equality (not resolved)
Health Care Equality (not resolved)
China's Economic/ Military Threat (not resolved)
Russia's Economic/ Military Threat (not resolved)
Darfur (not resolved)
Israel/ Palestinian Equality (not resolved)
Korean War (turned cold, but not resolved)
Terrorism/ National Security/ America Having Enemies (not resolved)
Economy (not resolved)
AIDS (not resolved)
Cancer(not resolved)

All of these topics have been "front page" issues at one time or another, yet none of them have been truly settled, rather passed over for something more sensational and new.

I've chosen the topic of Wall Street and juxtaposed it with the issue of National Security because of how influential they were and are in prevalance in presidential election dialogue, and the their coverage in American media outlets.
Wall Street > National Security.
Why do we no longer see statistics of dead soldiers on the nightly news? And progress of government reform and "terrorist hunting" in Afghanistan. Whatever happened to the Shiite/Sunni conflict that had the fruition of Iraqi sovereignty paralyzed?
It was all replaced by the Sub prime Mortgage Crisis, the Short Selling tactics of Wall street, the fall of Lehman Brothers, the closing down of small town banks, etc...

This is the thinking that led me to "Post Trauma"



(not my photo)

I'm excited

Fear is becoming the backbone of my thesis.

Some ideas about an upcoming body of work... please comment and criticize

In a world where an abandoned bag warrants a bomb squad locking down a train station, a drop in the Dow Jones compelling me to take my life saving out of the bank and stuffing them in my mattress, a planet that is flooding, burning and suffocating to death, a and a shifting of military and political dominance, there is a sense of omnipresent doom that permeates all facets of my life. On the surface, this apocalyptic ethos can be contributed to the news and commercial media’s grip on my mind at all times. Yet these media based influences are the byproducts of something bigger at hand. News and commercials propaganda are tools of established institutions to generate revenue via the exploitation of a market. They simply supply a demand. The demand is psychological, and based on fear. Fear is the core of humanity as an entity, and has influenced our development as a species from day one.
I’d like to explore contemporary American “human fears” and trace them back from a given point. Since it is my belief that cosmic history is cyclical and repeated in varying formats, it is not important where I begin my exploration. Therefore I will start with the historical event that is most relevant to my own fear; 9/11. From there I will examine the other historical events that have led me to feel the way I do about American’s role in the world, as both individuals making personnel decisions, to larger scale government and corporate policies (that are in fact a result of our combined personnel decisions). To conclude this body of work, I will create an image that will presuppose the fruition of the most relevant American fear.
In terms of execution, I would like to work in a constructionist mode, building and photographing sets. The images will be aestheticized frozen moments of time that are, slightly abstracted in composition, yet very realistic.

My biggest point is to address the fact that human beings have always been and will always be in state of apocalyptic-fear, and that it is an inherent part of the human condition. By aestheticizing this fact, I will hopefully make the situation easier to address for an already uneasy audience.

Waiting for tape

I just made this whilst sitting in my studio waiting for the CVS to open so I can buy more plastic tape.

1st

An Empty post from M.T.