Bowling eBay Death

Bowling eBay Death

Friday, Aug 29, 2014 - Sunday, Aug 31, 2014

Location:
Muddguts
 41 Montrose Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11206

"What did you do last night?" "I went bowling." "Who did you play?" "Oh, I don’t know, some league from a funeral home. They bowled like motherfuckers. Like their life depended on it."

For some reason, I started buying funeral home bowling shirts on eBay around 15 years ago. The alcoholic not knowing the exact date of his first drink, but fully aware of the date of his last drink. I don’t know exactly when and in what consumerist stupor I first decided to search for vintage funeral home bowling shirts, but it took a few consecutive sessions of eBay slacking before I found one. So, on occasion, when the thought surfaced from the primeval mud of my individual (or our collective) subconscious, I’d look for funeral home bowling shirts on eBay. And when on rare occasion I found one, I’d usually buy it as the only bidder, never spending more than twenty bucks.

Ironic consumption has become increasingly ironic, and the search for the ironic has become increasingly iconic. The old millennium ended, and the commodification of cultural consumption as an online experience has led directly to a dictatorship of obscurity.

Death is obviously ultimately beautiful as life is beautiful, but the ugly aspects of the biz of death and dying is taken care of by professionals who need to go bowling once in a while.

I staged this exhibition with Keegan Cooke/Circadian Press and Lele Saveri/Muddguts.

You get one chance to roll a strike, and if you do, you get a grim reaper bowling trophy. All the funeral home bowlers are turning their back on us as we bowl.

– Johan Kugelberg

BOO-HOORAY exhibits both at home in New York City as well as internationally. We also stage collaborative exhibitions with the Hayward Gallery and Rough Trade in London, Tsutaya Daikanyama, Hysteric Glamour, and United Arrows in Tokyo, Galleri Operatingplace in Stockholm, Colette in Paris, PopMontreal in Montreal, Mishka Los Angeles, Printed Matter at both MOCA/LA and PS1/NYC, and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, the New York Public Library, the Grolier Club, and Milk Gallery in New York.

Boo-Hooray exhibitions have included shows featuring Larry Clark, The Velvet Underground, Ray Johnson, Afrika Bambaataa, Jonas Mekas, Ed Sanders, Linder Sterling and Jon Savage, Spencer Sweeney, Houston Rap, private press vinyl, Wallace Berman, anarcho-punk group Crass, Jason Polan, Jack Smith, cult-filmmaker Ed Wood, and Situationist Times editor Jacqueline de Jong.

The exhibitions are drawn from cultural archives that Boo-Hooray excavates, organizes, and places in institutions such as Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Cornell University’s Division of Rare Manuscript Collections, Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library.