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Post Info TOPIC: Art from Surfacing? - Karen Kilimnik


Dave

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Art from Surfacing? - Karen Kilimnik
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Kilimnik's I Don't Like Mondays takes aim at school violence

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2007-09-27/culture/fevered-fantasia/

I Don't Like Mondays, the Boom Town Rats, Shooting Spree, or Schoolyard Massacre. It riffs on the 1979 shooting spree in which 16-year-old Brenda Spencer opened fire on an elementary school playground across the street from her San Diego home. She used a rifle her father had given her for Christmas the month before.

A janitor and the school principal were killed when they tried to shield the kids; a policeman and eight children were wounded. At the end of a six-hour siege, Spencer told cops: "I don't like Mondays," adding she favored victims wearing red or blue jackets.


Kilimnik's bone-jarring installation features shooting targets, chicken wire, a lunchbox, a jump rope, notebooks, pencils, and a mechanical toy dog. It also includes an enlarged news article about the attack and a soundtrack with the Boomtown Rats' "I Don't Like Mondays," which popularized the crime. This 1991 work eerily presages the 1999 Columbine shooting and the Virginia Tech massacre this past April.



-- Edited by ArrGee at 08:01, 2007-10-05

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House on Fire

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Well I for one object to the article's phrase:

"the Boomtown Rats' "I Don't Like Mondays," which popularized the crime."

As a song it certainly did not attempt to make the incident appear glamourous - only hideous. As Geldof said, "I didn't want to make this creep a heroine." (Ironically, Spencer was delighted with the single because she'd always wanted to be famous - as if cold blooded random murder for the fun of it wasn't enough for her...).

And the video still remains as disturbing as it was back in 1979.

"Popularized"? I'd say it was ahead of its time as a warning of the society to come...



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