Koons on the Freeway: What’s Wrong with this Picture?

We spend 80 million hours a day watching videos on YouTube, and we would certainly like to have a few of those hours back. That is, of course, if we are using YouTube purely as a distraction, as opposed to a powerful way to share ideas. 

“The reason online video is so significant is that it is now allowing the rest of the world’s talents to be shared digitally,” writes TED curator Chris Anderson. In other words, whether you are a skateboarder, a unicyclist or an artist, who can find your niche on YouTube, and share ideas within that specific community. 

That is precisely the case with the video below, which the artist Julian Hoeber selected as part of the original MOCAtv series called “YouTube Curated By. As Hoeber explains to Big Think, this video is an example of “something being shared among a smaller group of people who are in on the joke.”

Watch the video here:

As Hoeber explains, Jeff Koons’s Bowl With Eggs was not part of an installation, but was actually abandoned on the 210 Freeway in California. “This video might lack entertainment value for people who don’t understand the scale and polish of what Koons does,” Hoeber tells us. However, “YouTube is the perfect platform for something like this because part of what’s enjoyable in the video is that something captured on the sly is being publicly shared within a specific community.”

The “YouTube Curated By” series features Hoeber, along with Gary Baseman and Shepard Fairey, rapper Brooke Candy and curator Alma Ruiz. They talk about the inspiration, entertainment, education and distraction they find on YouTube. To view the rest of the MOCAtv series, click here.