Rare is the day when Bwog kicks things off by satisfying your doubtless insatiable appetite for Columbia-related experimental art news, but here goes:

The recent spate of bias incidents have led John DeSerio, GS, to undertake a marathon social and artistic experiment: for the next week, his "word wall" will be on display on Low Plaza from 12-6PM, and ready for you to write anything on it. And DeSerio means anything: For him, the solo project is about "taking ownership over our words," and generating the kind of dialogue and discussion that he thinks will help us get over recent events.

Precedent leaves Bwog a little worried, but we're hoping for the best.

Meanwhile, the folks over at ABC No Rio (?) have offered this subtle riposte to last week's investigation. For those of you whose high school years didn't involve listening to Biograph on repeat for weeks months years at a time, the rest of this line (from Dylan B-side "Up to Me") goes as follows: "In fourteen months I only smiled once and I didn't do it consciously/Somebody's got to be on your trail, I guess it must be up to m e."

Better believe were on your trail, mysterious guerrilla artist with a seemingly endless supply of easy-to-break dental molds. Or as Bobby would say,

"I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain..."

-ARR

What's up with those teeth?

For the past few weeks, there have been odd dental-themed art installations seen outside of Nacho's and on the scaffolding across from Carman on 114^th Street. The remains of a former installation are visible on the east face of the scaffolding around the Law Library, and there are probably other locations that haven't been called to my attention yet.

The pieces consist of protruding sets of faux human teeth, backed by plywood painted in washed out tones. Each piece has a separate and seemingly original poem or song lyric written in chalk: The one on Nacho's is about huffing, and the one on the Butler scaffolding is about truck driving and singing. The teeth are apparently plaster dentist's molds and they are fairly brittle. I have come to this conclusion because I broke off an incisor as I was investigating.

The artistic style of the tooth installations closely resembles that of the "Books Through Bars" dropoff box in Lerner Hall (which hasn't been seen in a while). Books Through Bars is a charitable organization that collects books and gives them to America's convicts so that they can be fashioned into knives. The New York City chapter of the organization is housed at ABC No Rio, a "center for art and activism on New York's Lower East Side." These guys love all kinds of guerrilla street art (some of it good, some of it bad) and this sort of thing would be right up their alley. ABC No Rio's building on Rivington Street used to host the weekly meetings for Books Though Bars, which have recently relocated to the New York City AIDS Housing Network headquarters. But the most prominent clue connecting ABC No Rio to the tooth art is a note on their website requesting that people bring their books to a drop off box that they have installed in none other than Columbia University's Lerner Hall. The case isn't airtight, but it's the best one we have.

I tried calling and e-mailing ABC No Rio, but they never got back to me. I even offered to donate my copy of John Madden's autobiography, Hey Wait a Minute: I Wrote a Book! to their program in exchange for an interview. When they didn't respond, I destroyed the book out of spite.

Figure out who's posting the jaws around campus? This pair was spotted above the scaffolding from EC to Revson Plaza, and it's starting to get unnerving.

Friday afternoon edit: We noticed a plastic container in Lerner lobby bearing a poster covered in similarly orthodontic motifs. It also has a sign that asks passersby to donate "literature for prisoners." Teeth molds = non sequitur advertising for charitable effort?

BW's art editor, Rachel Lindsay (also the woman behind that fantastic mural down in JJ's) was really excited to find this unusual installation, and wrote in:

People try REALLY hard to get things noticed on the bulletin boards in Hamilton. But today: a clear winner -- it just comes out and bites you. Check out the first bulletin board in the right hand stairwell of Hamilton for an art installation of an orthodontic tooth mold. To the artist: I hope it wasn't bad experiences during the braces years that turned you into an angry artiste. AWESOME STUFF! KEEP IT UP!