In 2008, during Prospect 1, the city’s much-hyped bid for standing on the global arts festival circuit, Kaechele, through her organization KK Projects, held a $250-a-plate dinner party on the block where she operated her galleries. Movie star Uma Thurman and Nagin recovery czar Ed Blakely were among guests who ate raw oysters and organic pork loin on a hand-carved, candle-lit wooden table set out in the middle of an otherwise desolate street.I know, right? You couldn't make up crazier shit than that. Hey, Treme watchers. Is there a Kirsha character in the show yet? I mean if we overlook the fact that the whole show is its own Kirsha, really. Anyway there's a tremendous amount of denial and selfishness and just plain evil crazy loaded into that interview, and since sociopathy seems to be the theme of the week, please feel free to dive right in. How damaged does a human have to be to seriously conceive of her own life as a piece of performance art? Or at least, how thoroughly dishonest would she have to be? But I've gotten tired of trying figure out what motivates people like Kirsha Kaeschle or Ed Blakeley. I only know that they allow themselves to do real damage to the world around them while torturing out a way to think of what they do as heroism.
Kaechele, 35, now lives in Tasmania, an island state of Australia, with her boyfriend, David Walsh, a professional gambler who made a fortune using a high-tech system to bet on horses. In January, with Kaechele at his side, Walsh opened the Museum of New and Old Art in Tasmania as a home for his private art collection, the largest in the southern hemisphere. His collection is stamped with the avant-garde sensibility and fascination with mortality that characterized the exhibitions in Kaechele’s now-shuttered KK Project galleries.
Since leaving New Orleans, Kaechele has let her St. Roch properties fall into neglect. She owes $38,573 in real estate taxes and code enforcement liens on the St. Roch holdings, one of which – the house at 2451 N. Villere, was recently torn down after the city cited Kaechele for “demolition by neglect.” Kaechele has torn down two others on her own initiative.
But enough of that. The Quote of the Day here comes from Varg who examines the interview in detail here. One of his observations.
Ah yes. The fascination with the destruction of New Orleans! Among the most common themes of artists who visit/move here! The beauty of its entropy! Some of us find its restored creole cottages and shotguns beautiful. Not all of us are third world and loving it. Some realize i’ts nothing like the third world, don’t love the conditions here, and actively spend a little part of each day trying to make it better rather than glamorizing its destruction. Dear creators out there, the artistic depiction of demolished thing like New Orleans houses and old amusement parks and flooded stuff, by all means, do it if you have to. But there is nothing original in it.Although it sure does keep the brand out there. Which is why we can't have nice things. Like hospitals. Or any development beyond our sad industry in feeding and sucking up to "life artists" who come to make a spectacle out of our decay.
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