I've been working on a paper about the use of craft as a "Trojan horse", and I ran across this great, literal use of the Trojan horse by students at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. Back in March, art students at Tyler constructed four large cardboard horses, then sneakily delivered them to the other art schools in town. I was disappointed that the Tyler students didn't put on stripe-y shirts and berets and hide in the horse, but they DID leave a manifesto of sorts, declaring "war" on the other schools:
Oh snap! When I was an art student, the most worked up we ever got was when the gas station down the street raised their prices on malt liquor.
Responses from the other art schools were varied. Here's a pretty lame video response from students at Moore College of the arts...although I can totally appreciate their catty nitpicking of the Tyler students' design prowess.
University of the Arts actually RETALIATED against Tyler, although I understand it took them a week to deliver the cut off horse head back to Tyler. If they had shown some real initiative, I think they could have snuck the head into the bed of Tyler's Dean while they were sleeping.
I'm all for art students making things interesting. The other schools seemed to be talking big last Spring, but I'm unsure if anyone ever followed through. If anybody has updates, please email me!
