By copyrighting his property as an artwork, he has prevented oil companies from drilling on it.
Peter Von Tiesenhausen has developed artworks all over his property in northern Alberta. There’s a boat woven from sticks that is gradually being reclaimed by the land; there is a fence that he adds to each year of his life, and there are many “watching” trees, with eyes scored into their bark.
Oil interests pester him continually about drilling on his land. His repeated rebuffing of their advances lead them to move toward arbitration. They made it very clear that he only owned the top 6 inches of soil, and they had rights to anything underneath. He then, off the top of his head, threatened them that he would sue damages if they disturbed his 6 inches, for the entire property is an artwork. Any disturbance would compromise the work, and he would sue.
Immediately after that meeting, he called a lawyer (who is also an art collector) and asked if his intuitive threat would actually hold legally. The lawyer visited, saw the scope of the work on the property, and wrote a document protecting the artwork.
The oil companies have kept their distance ever since.
This is but one example of Peter’s ability to negotiate quickly on his feet, and to find solutions that defy expectations.
I feel like this is really important.
“You only own the top six inches.” I own every inch from dust to Hell’s breath. Fight me.
That was super nice of them.
And now I’m mad that nobody told us we were given cows. Cause that’s really f*cking nice and nobody mentioned it at all.
American media tends to disregard that anyone donates to the US. And then Amurricans complain about money going abroad because “nobody helped the US in our disasters.”
>.>
Also, do you know how much a cow costs? O.O
It isn’t just a matter of how much a cow costs, its a matter of considering that Masai life is based around their cattle. Its their wealth, their food, and a significant part of their religion. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:
“Traditional Maasai lifestyle centres around their cattle which constitute their primary source of food. The measure of a man’s wealth is in terms of cattle and children. A herd of 50 cattle is respectable, and the more children the better. A man who has plenty of one but not the other is considered to be poor.[37] A Maasai religious belief relates that God gave them all the cattle on earth, leading to the belief that rustling cattle from other tribes is a matter of taking back what is rightfully theirs, a practice that has become much less common.[38]”
So its not just “they gave us 14 cows”, its that they gave us something that is very important and significant to them, it is more than just a kind gesture that definitely deserves to be known and its a genuine shame that more people don’t know about it.
Wait, you guys DON’T KNOW that we offer help to the US when you have disasters???????
Shit, down here in Brazil we not only offered to send tracking units and doctors to help in 9/11 but we wanted to send a whole lot of donations to help with Katrina (we have experience with floods down here so we knew what kind of medicine to send to prevent outbreaks).
We alone had like 2 army airplanes full of medicine and non-perishables like baby formula, diapers, bottled water, mosquito nets and other stuff that’s needed to fight opportunistic diseases that hit flooded areas, enough to assist a good few thousand people at least, ready to go the day after it hit, but your government refused the donations.
The same thing happened to the Canadians and Europeans who offered help, the US embassies around the world told us all to give money to Red Cross.
And so we did, we all gave hundreds of millions of dollars to them, and then this happened:
So please, don’t you go spreading misinformation and prejudice against the rest of the world, WE DID OFFER HELP AND ORGANIZED IT EVEN FASTER THAN BUSH DID, BUT Y’ALL REFUSED IT.
Oh wow I had no idea this happened it’s really not talked about in media at all wow this is something good to know about wow
I’m so angry.
I didn’t know that other countries tried to help after 9/11 or Katrina. Like, that’s something we, the people, should hear about and we don’t.
Please don’t blame us for the shitty decisions our government makes. We don’t have as much control over our government as we would like to think and they keep a lot from us.
Spread this shit.
After Katrina, Cuba donated several hundred blankets. Think about that. A country that is suffering economically due directly to the US embargo offered to help us when we needed it by sending what they could. And once again, it was refused. We have a government that is so self-righteous that we refuse to accept disaster aid in order to maintain this facade that we are the most generous nation on earth.
Okay, Katrina thing. Only Texans really knows this? and even then it’s not wide spread. Mexico sent their army. They sent their army for relief efforts. Didn’t call ahead, they drove all the way to San Antonio with doctors and food and all sorts of supplies. When people actually got a call from them saying “Hey, we’re sending people up.” The people who answered said “What? We can’t…” “Too late, already there.” This was while the government was turning down help. So yeah, other countries send relief. Forest fires up in Washington last year? Firefighters from Australia came up to assist. Like… we don’t hear about this shit. At all.
I can second the above with the fires.
Most the time, when people say “oh FEMA or something sent people right?” re: fires, its actually people from other countries showing up and kinda ignoring the government telling them to fuck off and staying on behalf of local departments because we REALLY need them.
If there’s a huge ass disaster, and the government is sitting there with a thumb up it’s ass, help is offered and most the time– shit, it gets there! But then the feds do something really fucking dirty. They insist they were the help, if it’s talked about at all.
They insist those people putting out fires were federal people, because to most people a fireman’s a fireman. The people handing out water and food, a relief worker is a relief worker. So on and so forth.
We had people come up when the fires were so bad a while ago– not the Australians, but i think there was like a German group of like 3 guys that flew themselves over? They came out of sheer “this is horrible and we’re helping” and my dad [local fire chief] had them working with our guys and the feds lost no time telling every news outlet that it was THEIR people doing all the fire knockdowns and structure work when these guys were running into buildings and grabbing people, pets, and people’s important documents because they knew papers were a pain in the ass to replace.
What you gotta understand is that our government is very intent on selling us and the rest of the world [as much as possible] the idea of a powerful and self reliant country. All our reporting on disasters, starts with the scaremongering and then moves to “but our people can handle it because we’re the best at handling things” and then they move on before the idea it’s out of control comes to mind. The average person outside of the disaster has no idea, if they have never been around such an event or met someone who regularly deals with these things, they will kinda probably nod along with that. Because we have no real scope on the scale and impact– by design. Our media intake is very controlled to slant everything to the “eh, we can handle it and everyone else out there– they need our help because they’re not so good at handling disasters like we are.” People who know better, reading international news, interacting with international social groups, looking outside their sphere of community– we know better but that kinda slant is really hard to break from because of that grip American media has on information. So, taking that knowledge, we further have restricted reporting on certain disasters because they’re considered unimportant. Hurricanes are considered important, earthquakes are only considered important if it wrecks something the government cares about or somewhere a couple million people live that they’ll upset the national money flow/they can throw money at someone to make the news care, floods are only important if it’s in a similar manner to earthquakes but since they occur annually they’re rarely reported on nationally, mudslides that kill people or leave hundreds homeless aren’t important to the government even through they happen constantly, wildfires that consume most of the nation/continent each year generally are unimportant until they consume a town or threaten a government interest/money flow location. Terrorist attacks are always important because people will talk about them.
So, when we do get help for any of the above, it’s possible that most people may have no idea about what’s happened, let alone that help’s been sent. Or if people know something happened, the details are vague– the news don’t care to give the nitty gritty. You’ll know something happened and people are suffering and “gee, isn’t it good you’re not them” and then now the weather.
So, yeah, basically no one really knows we get help.
International response to Hurricane Katrina:
We got HELLA help, but nobody really talks about it
American Media really fails regularly
Hurricane Sandy, Quebec sends power line crews down to assist in restoring power. California gets rid of water bombers due to budget cuts, Canada sends theirs down to help fight wild fires. Amazing what living on the border and having outside TV News does to your information flow.
After Katrina, Denmark offered to donate water purification units so people wouldn’t get sick from drinking contaminated water, but the offer was declined.
A private Danish company built a mobile satellite phone booth and drove it around the poor neighbourhoods in Mississippi and Louisiana so people could call their families and insurance companies for free (apparently there was a deadline for reporting damages but people couldn’t call in because their mobile phones were dead and landlines were down).
American propaganda is not a thing of the past, nor is it a new thing. It has been around forever, telling stories of exceptionalism and self-reliance while our government tries its hardest to refuse the help of others and offer its own to them, to try and force other nations onto their back foot and remain aggressively benevolent in international matters, so that it can lord that shit over them in negotiations and the media in general. I guarantee you America would have a less jingoistic, less xenophobic populace overall if this sort of information were actually reported to us. If we weren’t always fed the lie of helping the world without any gratitude or help in return. If the media didn’t present us as world police and instead as a part of the community, as other countries try hard to include us as, then maybe Americans would actually act like they’re part of a fucking community. But global citizens are hard to monger fear and distrust and xenophobia and nationalism with. They’re hard to control with propaganda and hate. They’re hard to keep ignorant and docile and saying “this is fine” while the empire burns. A lot of Americans wonder why our country is seen as a worldwide bully. Shit like that, my friends. Shit like that. Its hubris is seemingly limitless.
C O M M E N T A R Y
…makes me wanna start a news broadcast in the U.S. that reports on good stories and truth in the news.
what TLJ probably meant: poor Kylo Ren look he had a reason to come into the Dark Side his own uncle tried to kill him :’((( it’s also all Luke’s fault, blame him, he gave up on Ben so easy!!
what I, an intellectual, learned form TLJ: if Luke “there is still good in you dad Vader” Skywalker takes one look at Ben Solo’s mind and thinks this one is irredeemable then well, shit, I absolutely believe him
Kylo: luke tried to kill me when I was just a child!
What Rey Should have Said: And if he had then you wouldn’t have DESTROYED MULTIPLE PLANETS
Kylo: …..
Rey: YOU SLAUGHTERED BILLIONS
Kylo: …….
Rey: YOU MURDERED CHILDREN WITH A LASER SWORD
Kylo: okay but Luke…tried to kill me…
Rey: Because he saw your future where you murdered children and blew up planets
Kylo: Okay but if I WAS DEAD that would be BAD for me personally
Rey: But good for the billions of innocent people who you brutally murdered
Kylo: But…bad…for me…
So
TRAGIC
Rey: I don’t think you understand how this “Sad Backstory” thing works
Not just that, but literally IMMEDIATELY after almost getting killed by Luke he goes and kills all of the other jedi-in-training who won’t follow him. His first action after almost being killed, because Luke thought he was going to be evil, was murdering people.
I still can’t find the logical connection here like why would that be your second step
I scrolled thru this, reading everything, accepting the god awful meme that it was. Then I looked at the notes and was a bit taken back. Then…then I noticed the op.
The News-Herald, Franklin, Pennsylvania, February 2, 1950
“Trauma” - I don’t write much anymore, so sit down and read up
You may have heard that this year’s worst mass shooting thus far occurred today in the small town of Benton, KY. In total, there were two deaths and 17 others injured. Five of the victims were transported to the Trauma ICU at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where I happen to work as a nurse.
In fact, I happened to be at work today, and one of the two beds assigned to me at the beginning of the shift was empty and ready for admission. I received the first victim from the emergency room, and this patient died mere moments after arrival. Over the next couple of hours we admitted the four other patients to other beds, and their family members were soon to join them at bedside. In their faces were concern and hope, and in many an unexpected happiness. Yes, perhaps their child had been shot, but they still lived. In the hall I saw middle-aged men hugging each other in tears: “Mine’s alive, is your boy okay?”
Not so with the family of my patient. In the years I’ve been a nurse, I’ve seen death and grief on a regular basis, but never like today. There are many kinds of crying: angry, anxious, scared, sad... But today I heard the quiet, quivering wail of a grandmother’s complete helplessness and despair. I watched a grandfather fall to his knees as he rounded a corner and caught sight of his lifeless grandkid, whom we had done our best to clean up and make presentable. I watched them lay themselves over his body, as if trying to protect him even in death.
And I saw more staff members crying throughout the day than I’ve ever seen - our security officer, a couple of nurse practitioner students, a new hire, several seasoned nurses... even me. In four years of ER and ICU nursing I’ve only cried three times because of my job. We often carry the heartache of our patients’ troubles as secret burdens that are never spoken of outside work. Nurses have thick skins by necessity, but today was incomprehensible.
I often think about a famous quote from Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood: “My mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.”
But today I was one of the helpers, and as I looked around and saw the hurt on the faces of the other helpers I wondered, “But to whom do we look to now? When our own emotional levees overflow, where is our comfort?”
After things settled down a bit, our Trauma team had a formal “debriefing” session consisting of one of our doctors saying some supportive words, as well some remarks by a random man I’d never seen from an HR-ish counseling-ish department. I didn’t know this man, and I wanted him to leave. I left the group instead at this point and went back to a newly-arrived victim’s bedside to help that nurse get things in order. Strangers couldn’t get us through this.
As we later gathered in the break room to clock out for the day, we got into a discussion about the past few hours. We talked about the inadequacy of current political policy to address mental health and gun control. Some speculated about the shooter’s motives. We denounced “thoughts and prayers” as the excuses they are. We wondered about the community in which this violence occurred, and what it was like. Were signs missed? Were there signs at all? We admitted to each other that we ultimately had no way of understanding this atrocity. We helpers tried our best to help each other, and then we went home.
Which is when I started crying, because I still can’t make sense of it.
Less than six months ago, I was working another shift when we received several victims from a mass shooting at a local church. So I’ve now worked with victims of two mass shootings in a mere six months?! What current are the helpers trying desperately to swim against, and will we make it?
I’m so tired in my spirit.
if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live in the midwest, this is it.
You missed some of the best ones
the best part about it is that the art installation isn’t actually called the Bean. It’s called Cloud Gate, and artist Anish Kapoor (yes, THAT Anish Kapoor) hates that we call it the Bean.
But i mean, look at it. It’s a bean.
How could you forget this one though
I HAD NO FUCKING IDEA THAT THE BEAN WAS CREATED BY ANISH KAPOOR.
someone help me why is anish kapoor important what did he do?
Alright sit down for some Art World Drama bcause this is what I live for.
So, sometime last year (?) science invented Vantablack, which is the darkest possible shade of black. Art world got incredibly excited. But as it needs to be very carefully made in a lab, it’s hard to get a hold of, and is extremely expensive. Enter Anish Kapoor, aka FuckFace McGee. Anish Kapoor buys the rights to Vantablack. He is the only human being on the planet that can legally use it, and he’s kind of a prick about it.
Art world is not thrilled with that.
Enter Stuart Semple.
Stuart Semple is an artist, and also makes pigments to sell in his free time. Stuart Semple is astoundingly pissed about this Vantablack nonsense, and Anish Kapoor’s dickery. Stuart Semple makes a new pigment, the brightest shade of pink ever, called Pinkest Pink, and puts it for sale on the internet. To be bought by everybody except Anish Kapoor. Literally, to purchase, you need to confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, do not associate with him, and will not sell or give the pigment to Anish Kapoor or his associates. Art world has a good laugh, everyone buys Pinkest Pink because it’s awesome, and damn it we deserve something.
Anish Kapoor however is a penis, and will not take this lying down, because HOW DARE he not have literally everything.
Anish Kapoor gets his London associates to buy him a thing of Pinkest Pink, and being such a classy human being, posts a picture to instagram of him with his middle finger covered in Pinkest Pink, captioned with “Up yours. #pink”
Everyone flips shit, because. Y’know. Fuck that guy. Especially Stuart Semple. For context here, Anish Kapoor is one of the richest artists on the planet, and has repeatedly been referred to as everything wrong with the art world, and the epitome of the art worlds elitism problem. He’s a giant douchebag. Meanwhile Stuart Semple makes pigments just to get them out there. He turns 0 profit from his now enourmously popular pigments.
Stuart Semple launches an investigation as to who the fuck leaked Pinkest Pink, and plans to strike back. He does so by releasing two new products. First is Diamond Dust, which is a glitter made from glass, so that a painting is still visible after it’s applied, but glitters like a mofo. It’s the most reflective glitter out there, and is available to everyone who isn’t Anish Kapoor. And it being made of glass, if you stick your finger in there, it’s going to hurt quite a bit, so that was Stuart Semple’s way of saying “shove your middle finger in this, asshole, see what happens”. Except without saying that, because he can get an insult across while still being fucking classy.
He also releases Black 2.0, created with the help of over a thousand artists worldwide.
Black 2.0 is the answer to Vantablack. Black 2.0 is a slightly less black black, but looks functionally the same to the human eye. It’s completely safe, smells like cherries, and costs four pounds. Vantablack is highly toxic, potentially explosive, needs to be applied in a special laboratory and sealed properly, can’t be moved across borders, can reach 300 degrees celsius if you’re not extremely careful, and costs thousands of dollars. Anish Kapoor is the only human being who can use Vantablack. He is the only human being who cannot use Black 2.0.
So I think we can guess who got the better deal.
And thus the feud ends, Kapoor defeated.
…But not quite.
Kapoor, in this entire afair, has made exactly two comments to the public. The first being his charming message about aquiring Pinkest Pink, the second being claiming to Buzzfeed that he and his small army of lawyers will be suing Semple, an extremely poor artist who cannot afford a lawyer.
No lawsuit has been made yet, fyi.
The point is, Kapoor is a prick, and doesn’t like talking to the lower classes. So one day in July 2017, he decides he needs another floor on his London studio apartment, and starts making arrangements to have it built. His neighbors are fucking pissed, because this will ruin the light of their apartments. They call to Semple to save them, or at the very least piss Kapoor off some more.
Semple answers to the call, and releases two new paints, Phaze and Shift, as always, banned to Kapoor. They change colours, Phaze with temperature, and Shift is just iridescent. Shift needs to be painted over Black 2.0 to work, and Phaze just works on its own.
So that’s been the art world for the last two years.
Basically, get fucked Anish Kapoor your bean sucks and so does your vantablack.
Stuart Semple is organising a bean-kissing event for Anish Kapoor’s birthday.
Reblogging for “By attending this event you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated with Anish Kapoor, you are not attending on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information, and belief this event will not be attended by Anish Kapoor.”
ALSO HE JUST POSTED THIS!!!!!! LIGHTEST LIGHT!
I know this isn’t my art blog but this entire post gives me life
Stuart Semple creates good paint and the best insults AND I AM HERE FOR IT
and on this first day of class, I’m feeling it …
I’m 27 and I’ve done all these things. Get off my lawn.







