finished reading On Making Less by Rirkrit Tiravanija. it’s a tiny book. i love tiny books. i do believe that worthy ideas can (and should) be expressed in under a hundred pages of simple language.

i enjoyed reading the text, even though it also read me right back (more on that later).

first of all, Rirkrit Tiravanija is an artist most known for his performances. most prominently, the ones where he turned gallery spaces into temporary kitchens where he cooked pad thai for the visitors in an act of changing the mode of spectatorship – putting an emphasis on processes and social dynamics rather than objects.

that type of work also got critiqued as self-congratulatory performance for mass entertainment. (i love this high-brow business of critiquing each other’s critiques)

Rirkrit is Thai and big into Eastern philosophy, but his art career unfolded mainly in US. this book is basically a conversation about how the West is obsessed with hoarding, describing, and policing cultural objects. it proposes a better way of non-disruptive ‘gardening’ of culture by (self)observation (see also: permaculture, The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka).

Rirkrit disses western institutions:

‘In the end it's really against Western Knowledge production, which is based on collecting. The West is collecting so that it has whatever it thinks is important and then because it collects it can name it and catalogue it. And so I would like to kind of point to that and say: return it to life!’

so, that’s awkward: i’m doing a degree in Museum Cultures – a discipline which is the perpetrator number one. and having just researched the British Museum, i also found that it suits the definition of a hoarding enterprise at tourist trap dot com. i agree that it would be better off dismantled – it’s just that nobody knows where to start.

but but but not all big museums completely suck. come on Rirkrit?

Rirkrit actually had a dozen solo shows in top museums across the world. he benefitted from them more than a little bit, and he messed with them pretty well, so for all the flaws, there has been a pretty fruitful exchange. like the show in Rotterdam, where he recreated room layouts and labels from his previous shows – but not the artwork:

‘In the retrospective at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 2005, Rirkrit Tiravanija build plywood replicas of seven past exhibitions and left those spaces empty. Guides and wall labels provided visitors with information on the works he had shown there.’

that’s great fun. i just finished writing an essay on museum labels, and that’s the level of messing with the form that i’d love to see more of.

it’s not just messing for the sake of it, but an act of changing the space for spectatorship into a space for active inquiry. here’s how he describes it himself:

‘Julia Grosse: You once said "In the East where I come from, one values the life around the object more than the object itself." So do we need a shift from objects to processes in art institutions?
Rikrit Tiravanija: There is a gap of understanding. And that gap will always be there. But what you need to understand is that you don't even need to fill it or to try to fill it, you just need to understand that there is a gap and that gap has to be accepted in order to accept yourself. A lot of people still want to fill it, because of course they can't live with the gap. I mean I started off wanting to fill the gap. I cooked Pad Thai and did everything else. But it's not possible, you cannot fill it.’

i think the takeaway is not the pad thai (sorry, i couldn’t resist) – but the idea that initially western museums were modelled after Christian temples: be in awe, leave feeling not good enough. and what he’s wanting to achieve is a Buddihist museum: contemplate the impermanence, leave feeling connected to the present. i like that.

i also wanted to mention that even though Rirkrit says he’s got a simple life and no big wishes, he’s also got a weekend house in the Catskills and is a tenured professor at Columbia University. so that’s nice.

i volunteered at Transmediale 2025 and it was great – applications are open for 2026, highly recommend 💘

Volunteer at transmediale

We are looking for committed and motivated volunteers to help us run transmediale 2026! In return for their support, volunteers will receive a free Festival Pass and insights into how the festival works ⚘

► https://transmediale.de/en/news/call-for-volunteers-2026

there was a homeless woman who often sat near Clapton passage. she never really asked anybody for anything. she sat on her blanket greeting people. and then she was not there. some weeks later, flowers and cards started appearing. that’s how i found out that she died, and that her name was Tracey. last weekend some locals organised a memorial: the plan was to release paper lanterns, one for each year of Tracey’s life. it looked very pretty at dusk. several dozen strangers showed up to do this for her.

but it was a windy evening, so the lanterns refused to go up. one got stuck on a tv dish. another one up a tree still covered in dry autumnal leaves. someone had to climb and extinguish it. lanterns travelled all the way down the passage – right where she used to sit – and into traffic. it got completely out of control. it felt very urgent. more urgent than Tracey’s problems were ever taken when she was there. and now it’s forever too late.

there is also a nice homeless man, Stuart. he was there. his spot is at Hackney Central station. he is applying for accommodation, but he’s very low down the list.

i feel too awkward to ever talk to homeless people. which by extension means that if it ever gets very bad, i accept that it will be too awkward for others to help me. the awkwardness deepens until it’s unmentionable. little atoms we are. rip tracey

optional viewing if you'd like to see This Is Hardcore performed in a Tiny Desk Concert

exquisitely odd venue/song match if you ask me, was not on my 2025 bingo card

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_KlY-AegeE

optional animal this friday is a capybara covered in green algae near the Uruguay River's dam. the actual story here is that creating artificial bodies of water results too much algae, which is not cool for the fish.

on this particular occasion this particular capybara is not not rocking the look – i consider this punk

current status

if this gets 1 like, i’m turning it into a drawing 🙃

thursday listening: Snowflakes are Dancing by Isao Tomita (1974)

classical music on analogue synths

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRRk7JChSts&list=PLGltXnm_5ITYjEwdJ_lWgQBr0kwWcpYbW&index=4

dear friends, it’s the last day of my employment! the work was challenging and unrewarding. i learned a lot, primarily about sadness and loneliness, but some service design as well. i wish to learn of it no more.

wiping my work laptop was cathartic, though i struggled to disable ‘find my mac’ for a good 15 minutes. let’s hope my next job brings some joy and meaning. but if not, honestly, i’m ready to be a grant-applying phd-writing barista. absolutely do not mind either way.

i’m going on a big trip to Switzerland and i will be posting about my every step bc i can. so prepare your eyes for arts

<3

a͓̽b͓̽s͓̽o͓̽l͓̽u͓̽t͓̽l͓̽e͓̽y͓̽ f͓̽r͓̽e͓̽e͓̽ !