I've been in two minds as to whether it is ethical to write about Carpentry 101, having published some of my writing in the companion book. I decided to, but I won't review the book here. Instead, and as a special treat for loyal ArtHeat readers, I have developed a new site, called ArtHeat DownLoad which will collect documents, video and etc of contemporary art, in one convenient place. First thing you can get at the ArtHeat DownLoad is the Carpentry 101 book featuring writers other than me: Nuno Sacramento, Lizza Littlewort, Ronald Suresh Roberts, Ed Young, Dan Halter, Bianca Baldi, Bettina Malcomess, Andrew Lamprecht and Johan Kritzinger.

The show, which took place last Wednesday, and will have iterations every Wednesday (6pm) till they're done, seemed to mark a return to the more professional side of performative for blank projects, after a series of rather odd one-nighters. Essentially what artists Christian Nerf and Douglas Gimberg did was to construct dozens of wooden crosses, and then left them in the space with a workbench, a saw, an axe and a chisel. On opening night, Christian and Douglas guided the more than eager audience to remove the arms of the crosses. In fact, the crowd got quite vicious, and I'm pretty sure I saw someone trying to gnaw through one of these rather pervasive symbols. I guess everyone likes to hack at things, the iconoclastic nature of the task at hand seemed to have vanished. People were just dismantling traditional wooden sculptures. And I must admit, I enjoyed seeing this, having grown up under the yokes of Christianity.

I don't think I really need to discuss what it means to dismantle crucifixes, the significance in this-day-and-age of breaking down symbols, the anti-religious-fanaticism message that was put forward by these actions, nor the irony of having the show in a predominately Muslim neighbourhood. It was a great success, having an obvious interpretation. Sometimes being unsubtle can be a problem, but in this instance, when it is coupled with a strong meaning, and some hearty manual labour and good earthy textures, it just works. My only problem is that no-one got angry. There was no protesting, no ugliness, no aggravation, especially considering that the artists sent out a fake letter of concern to hundreds of churches around the peninsula. With a pedagogical title like Carpentry 101, one would have hoped that converted weren't being preached at. Then again, maybe that's a question that should be directed at art-making in general.