The self attempts balance, descends.’
Jasper Johns
he above quote, from Johns’ famous appreciation of Marcel Duchamp, is an unlikely introduction to Lisa Anne Auerbach’s ‘Unicycle Shop’, published in 2007 by onestar press. The shop, a modest endeavor, was part of the High Desert Test Site festivities in Joshua Tree California. Auerbach knows her unicycles, and documents the efforts by numerous attractive individuals not to master the vehicle, but to balance unsupported by others, or the business booth itself. Hence the Johns quote. So we have mainly a sequence of noble attempts, in addition to an inventory of some of the things necessary in operating a10 cents an hour unicycle rental establishment. The first aid kit looks particularly useful. The circus, according to Michael Bakhtin, belongs to a ‘culture of laughter’ where the fear of power is literally laughed away. Or simply put; ‘they’re out there having fun, in that warm California sun!” And does anyone else notice that an inverted unicycle strongly resembles a notorious Duchamp work of 1913?
Tim Maul, New York
Lisa Anne Auerbach
Unicycle Shop
Published September 2007
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