From artist David Horvitz:
I very much enjoyed perusing his things for sale, each of which you may buy a small part, including:
If you give me $3,143 I will go as far away as possible. I live in New York. I will go to Perth, Australia the farthest distance from New York on Earth. I will mail you a photograph of me standing in New York. I will then mail you a photograph of me standing in Perth. I’m a little sad right now and I would kind of like to escape, so if you are thinking about getting one of these and not sure what you want, please take in consideration my emotions and pick this one.
and:
If you give me $437 I will go to Seattle and hang out with my best friend, Naseem. I will send you a photograph of us hanging out everyday. If we fight, and it is inevitable that we will, I will make a video of us apologizing to each other and explaining our position as to why we are angry at the other and how we will resolve the situation. I will post this on Youtube for you. Maybe we won’t fight! But we probably will.
David Horvitz things for sale.
July 26, 2010 at 9:08 pm
The thing that’s bothering me about that block of text isn’t staring at it. It’s the fact he used “tolerable” where he meant “tolerant.”
This has caused me to recognize that I am an insufferable ass.
July 26, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Ha ha that’s hilarious. I read that several times with this suspicion there was something not right about it. But each time, predictably, I grew bored, which only heightened his point. I blame the boredom for allowing me to miss that altogether. Actually, I still feel like the last sentence needs re-phrased. But still, the text caught me in a vulnerable moment of internet meandering.
July 27, 2010 at 8:02 am
Brilliant! I love that they’re so self-serving and yet that’s somehow part of their charm. That last sentence bothers me too, but it’s also kind of great in that it fits perfectly with the incredible variety of creative semantics and grammatical reinterpretation that you come across on the internet (uh, including this sentence)…
October 6, 2010 at 4:04 pm
I love that I just discovered this here! I recently did a white-glove Special Collections presentation of a book of Horvitz’s called Drugstore Beetle (http://davidhorvitz.com/blog/2010/03/drugstore-beetle-1.html) that he gave to our library last summer. The student who was discussing his work was asked how he supported himself (waiter? stock broker? elevator repairman?) and she said that people paid him to go places. Several eyebrows were raised.