You're Now Free to Move Around the Country
If you're wondering why the hell Triple Base was replaced by a travel agency step into the kiosk space and book a flight to Baghdad. Yes, Baghdad. The exuberant female voice-over describes what you will see there: cradle of civilization, etc, etc. As you stand in what looks like a cross between ATM booth and quick-stop self service booth.
A closer look invites you to the kiosk's booking screen amid printed brochures and backlit lucite signage glowing with the airplane logo of Abidin Travel in magenta, white and deep blue. The website alows you to book flights, ground transportation and cars. Four color travel brochures are available for the taking as well as a variety of color promotional posters of sights in and around the city. Each are emblazoned with the tagline "Welcome to Baghdad" with additional fineprint at the bottom of the abidintravels website as well as the artist Adel Abidin - http://www.adelabidin.com. An image of someone playing the bongos wearing a gray "ARMY" t-shirt, a sniper's nest in a guard tower, or a man with a bandaged jaw are included here.
On the wall around a corner a video these images were lifted from plays showing gunshots to the head, cars in flames and various elements of military or insurgent carnage. The intell or skinny on this whole venture is that Triple Base with CCA made this happen. Like most new media setups, it invites a level of interactivity with residual rewards for taking the printed materials or clicking through the presentation also online http://abidintravels.com/.
What makes it extra special is the context of having it as a store front in the San Francisco Mission district instead of part of an art show where you are liable to expect this sort of mayhem. The level of public interaction this space has with the street cloaks as well as magnifies the irridescence of the work. The mundane action of walking into a store front instantly becomes a surreally creative act on part of the viewer. The pile of posters stacked against one wall emulates Felix Gonzales-Torres work of black and white posters in that they are of everyday images of war and they are available for the taking. The fact that everyday images of war have repenetrated the vox populi adds a new direction to this method of presentation. Here the act of taking away more thoroughly integrates the banal with surreal resulting in it marking you just a bit as you leave. This is engaging, interesting, disturbing and in the words of George Tenet "A SLAM DUNK".
