This is a project where I pay workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk to review my art and website and pay them $5 dollars for 500 words. This is the 23rd review I've received:
Paul Shortt, a UIUC
graduate, has been up to no good. He has been notoriously taking enlarged no
photograph icons across the great state of Illinois and photographing them. He
took it in front of a beautiful tribunal in the lush spring bloom, he took it in
front of the Champaign county Correctional Centre, he took it in front of the
iconic UIUC statue, he took it front of what seems to be a veritably disbanded
mining facility and silo, he took it in front of the Champaign county
courthouse, a place which in the great depression saw the sanctioning of
warrants for arrests and seizures of ignoble outlaws and looting hooligans like
Dillinger, Mad dog, and the great Alfonso Capone. Oh what a pain is this Paul
‘the beard’ Shortt. In How to be Narcissistic, a workshop and performance as a
part of The Speakeasy programme, he attempts to capture the essence of the
programme. They awarded themselves for being that they are and owing who they
are. In an attempt to capture the sense of owing one’s own self, and the innate
desire to be and want more than that is ostensible they succeeded in a fun and
jocund fashion. In his other works like Please do not climb, corner piece, ROFL
CON, It’s simple but complicated and free posters he attempts to perpetrate
simple actions with larger, more convoluted and intricate connotations, often
insinuating and mocking the charade that are the modern times. Be it the simple
act of tombering an escalade or doing something because some sign in the corner
of some room asks it. Be with giving the bird to perfect strangers on the
highway or manhandling the flag, or be it handing out posters for free that say
they’ve been handed out for free, these simple acts seems to invoke much deeper
and far reflecting glares in the enigma that is the spirit. He even attempts to
shock Chicago in both the literal and the figurative sense. He shocks them by
installing a mirrored pillory in the Market place mall in Chicago, and he also
shocks them with minor electrocutions at his very own exhibition. Seems like in
both his attempts he’s trying to emulate something, is it the rapport of the
human kind for ‘’an eye, for an eye’’ approach where we’ve come from beheading
criminals in public on the pillories and now electrocuting them relatively
discretely, or is it just a puerile jibe, who knows? He seeks a good
conversation and erects seemingly nonchalant insignia in midst of just
anywhere, he takes a three-hour tour and gives out certificates, he even
devises modern greeting. In his own way, our Paul Shortt is saying more than he
is saying; all we have to do is stop, look and see. It’s not rubbernecking, as
Elvis would see, it’s just the philosophy.
