Eternal Retirement Home for Artists To Be Built On Salton Sea Property: WTF, LOLZ
The Eternal Telethon (initiated by Akina Cox, Chad Dilley, Ina Viola Blasius, Niko Solario and John Burtle) raises money with the goal of purchasing land near the Salton Sea for the eventual creation of a retirement community for artists. The telethons are serial, feature performance, art, and music. They happen frequently. They can be very long with many guests, or are short. The following are answers to questions I posed to the Eternal Telethon.
How many telethons have been performed?
-More than twelve.
How much money for the artists' retirement home has the Eternal Telethon raised to date?
-We've raised around three grand.
Where is this money stored?
-Our accountant holds the money.
Two things that needn't be said, yet will be said:
The eternal telethon matches an implicit critique of gender and behavioral normativity with a plan for an affective collective economy of pleasure within a soulless late capitalism.
The Eternal telethon is a contemporary form of pop art using the internet as a means of distribution and social networking - expanding a métier pioneered by Jerry Lewis.
In posing the question "How did you come up with the idea (for the telethon)?" Niko Solario told Drew Denny of the LA Record in 2010:
"Apparently, I was stoned. But I believe that it had something to do with Charles Baudelaire and his reference to the artist as an "Eternal Convalescent."
Top five all time best places I think Eternal Telethon has occurred at:
1) Under a blanket
2) About a swimming pool
3) Before a blackboard of an empty classroom
4) Inside a paper moon
5) At Akina and Andrews house
6) For a full 24 hours, non-stop, including the late night sleeping-performance
Physical descriptions of telethon performers + spaces, as seen on the YouTube video of Drake's "Fancy" Ft. T.I. and Swizz Beats - The Eternal Video Remix, transcribed from there, 10/30/12.
:15 seconds - Sensually reclining individual of indeterminate gender wears a long red dress with gold fabric covering face. Sewn on to dress, as a centipede, are several long armed gloves stuffed and dangling from it. The figure is leaning against a dark blue cloth/curtain.
:30 seconds - 3 Figures fill the frame. The first has their face obscured by a hood. He holds a drumstick. Two other figures hold microphones; ones head appears as a large plush husky, the other wears a cowboy hat -- a purple scarf conceals the eyes. All stand before a painted mural of a setting sun over water -- bad art.
:45 seconds - The frame of the camera is tight piled high with junk. Two figures: one with green chiffon and flowers, the second with painted on mustache. One bares teeth the second has a tongue visible in its mouth.
1:00 minute - She wears a salmon top tight, a chocker circles her neck, tight salmon pants. On her head a jaunty bowler. The other he/she is in a dress with golden wig. Behind them -- desert sunsets.
1:15 - Both stand in front of a drum kit lacking clothes. One wears but a black skirt; the second has on maroon underpants-briefs. The skirt wears a witches mask, the underpants has a golden ball for its face. They appear to be dancing or mincing about with plastic gewgaws.
This is a selection of not necessarily positive viewer comments to Youtube videos of music and art performances at Eternal Telethons, recorded and available there on youtube.com (approximately 160 in total).
"you suck balls dude_ go back to music school"
"WTF_ did i just watch?"
"a dead cat can sing better than this. I like this song so much. Plz don't ruin this. just stick_ to your drums n
piano."
"What kind of bullshit class is this? Stupid I say!_"
This is a selection of not necessarily negative viewer comments to Youtube videos of music and art performances at Eternal Telethons, recorded and available there on youtube.com (approximately 160 in total).
"An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but if the doctor's_ cute forget that fruit."
"I once lived in a college dorm like that. Except that we couldn't make it through a_ whole song. Possibly a third of one. On a good night."
"honestly - quite possibly the_ best drumsolo i've ever heard."
"If Bruce Springsteen was a woman...Well that would be really strange, why would_ a woman be called "Bruce " ?"
A rough transcription from the end of a poetry reading by Tyler Mathew Oyer, followed with a short back and forth conversation; from an Eternal Telethon dated 2/05/11. (This was the telethon that took place inside the moon.) I feel the exchange stands as of an apt metaphor for the Eternal Telethon.
Tyler Matthew Oyer (reading poem from his book Blackout)... the moon lasts, like a giant piece of glitter, on cue and on point, every night, all we have is glitter, the fleeing moons of mankind that sparkle even when the moon is censored by the eclipse, glitter covers and coats, like a diva it becomes a serious façade, like the Iliad a supernatural metaphor, like the moon it is the transitory manifestation of the icon that gives our world endless attention.
An Eternal Telethon Host - Thank you very much Tyler (applause) etc...So one of the points that you made is that the moon lasts like a giant piece of glitter, it is always there. But there aren't very many things that we have that have that kind of stability, and our lives are kind of precarious.
Tyler Mathew Oyer. I know. Jesus had it Brittany Spears has it, You and I have it.
An Eternal Telethon Host - We do! Potentially through this (Eternal Telethon and future retirement home) project!
A list of titles of performances archived on Eternal Telethon's Youtube page.
A bunch of naked people under a blanket using their cellphones
Interview with a Heterosexual Man
relationships between facebook and wildlife
LACMA's Most Fabulous Trustee
Ted Talks: Fatima Hoang Explains the BCS
Artists Should Retire in Warm Sunny Places
Spiritual Wrestling -- Led by Patrick Woody on the Eternal Telethon
How to Make A Penny Pinching Coin Purse -- Frau Fiber Sewing Rebellion Demonstration
John McCain interviewed by Anna Mayer at the Free Church of Eternal Fiction
How to Make Butter Demonstration
Lotion Dripping Lathering Massage Sun Tan
Dorit Cypis Loves Us
The Eternal Telethon Website and The Pomona Museum of Art.
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