The Button

In the envisionment of the perfect control panel, there is a mass of buttons and switches. Little shining, whirring needles against their onyx faces. You have no idea what they do. there are series of buttons, and green lights that flash periodically. Eminent among them, a central place on the panel, is the red button. What it does you cannot fathom, but its very color radiates the sense you should not touch it. Immediately, your hand itches to press it, and though your attention moves on to other buttons on the control panel, your fingers are always aware of how far away that button is.

There is a "send" button on my e-mail inbox. In my head, it has all the trappings of that nefarious red button. I hold my digital finger over it, and I see the phantoms of red flags, red alarms, yellow tape flashing behind my eyes.

I did not push the button. Yet.


Kako Ueda

In other news I saw thisand liked it. Then I thought maybe you would think it interesting, too. However, perhaps I am misguided and you develop an extreme case of artist-envy and mail yourself an empty envelope made entirely out of A4 paper and Elmer's glue every day, hoping to inadvertently give yourself a papercut. The days pass on and no cut comes; out of the hundreds of failed letters you make thousands of sanguinary paper cut-out men all linked to one another by their hands, which Looney Tunes characters can create with a few seconds of snipping and flying paper bits. The paper cut-out men never seem to be realized in real life. One day your index finger accidentally slips and the coincidental paper cut eschews a single blood drop from your veins, a perfect sphere save for the cohesive forces between blood and skin and that tell-tale sign of gravity, a lengthening orb - oh, the imperfect world in which we live! Then, then can you say that your work of performance art is perfected and has superseded any and all artistic endeavors that Mr. Callesen has pursued, and even the fact he is Danish does not help, for you have given life to create art, and in mailing yourself envelopes of A4 paper every day have blurred the lines between art and life, for indeed, art=life - or is it the other way around?