Letter To Czech Republic Prime Minister Topolanek
This open letter revives Williams's 2002 transportation question and sends it into the European debt-panic theater of 2009. Addressed to Mirek Topolanek after his "way to hell" remark about Obama's stimulus package, the letter corrects the premise with brutal comic precision: the problem is not that we are approaching Hell, but that we are already on the way. The gesture is quintessential Williams, turning high-level political rhetoric into a logistics problem and then treating that problem as an artwork. The letter's politeness makes the accusation sharper, because diplomatic form is used to smuggle in metaphysical ridicule. As a companion to the Norman Mineta letter, it extends the Samizdat map of damnation from American transportation bureaucracy to European crisis management.
- DATE:
- April 5, 2009
- DOCUMENT TYPE:
- Letter / Open Letter
- NAMED ARTISTS / FIGURES:
- LG Williams; Mirek Topolanek; Barack Obama; Ray LaHood; Norman Mineta
- INSTITUTIONS / VENUES:
- Czech Republic; European Council; European Parliament; U.S. Department of Transportation
- PLACES:
- Czech Republic
- KEYWORDS:
- Topolanek way to hell reused; Obama stimulus attacked through art; European debt panic as art occasion; open letter as conceptual continuity; political rhetoric as artistic material; letter as aesthetic weapon