The fair’s legendary tented city(1) was designed this year by Pear Museum architect, Gilbert Winston, with a view to ‘recreate in each stand an element of that special feeling you get inside Pear Museum.’(2) To simulate the aura of a museum in the constrained space of an art fair stand is ambitious, to say the least, but, to Winston’s credit, several design features of his grand museum do translate surprisingly comfortably to this more intimate scale. When viewed from the air (or from the comfort of your own home, using newly-released software, Pearth®(3)) it became apparent that the silhouette of the vast temporary city matched that of Pear Museum, with the iconic bite motif forming the main entrance and the detached leaf reserved for the stands of the few independent galleries represented at the fair. Each individual stand was, in fact, a scaled-down approximation of a particular area of Pear Museum. Stand A1, for example, embodied the architectural design of Pear Museum’s main gallery space, while the triangular nature of Pear Museum’s Visual Research Centre accounted for the peculiar layout of Stand H2.
The main hub of the fair was densely hung with work, but this visual overload seemed quite deliberate and was cleverly countered by the sparseness of the periphery. As the world of art descended on Los Angeles, it seemed Kirshenbaum had some microcosmic vision of how these incomers would be dispersed throughout Winston’s meta-city. Beyond talk of infrastructure and the pragmatics of space allocation, there was an exciting display of new work showcased at the fair. Here, three of Pear Journal’s top critics – Mikki LeBeau, Rosemarie McCabe and Susan Sinden – offer a consideration of eight stands that particularly caught their attention. (PK)

David Destino
Pear Museum, L.A. Stand A1

Undoubtedly the most sought-after name in contemporary art, David Destino commanded the proverbial position A1 at this year’s fair, and deservedly so. In typically showman-like fashion, the artist sported a rainbow jersey during his brief appearance at the fair, as a reference to the mark of leadership adopted during a European cycle race of the past.(4) Beyond its superficial bravado, Destino’s sporting gesture could be interpreted as a subtle nod to P.M.o.C.A. artist, Ernest Eakins, whose work – displayed opposite that of Destino – deals with obsolete modes of transport, from the airplane to the bicycle. This deft spatial awareness is characteristic of a practitioner at one with his status as artist/curator/maverick, yet unheard-of in an art fair environment. As will be obvious to anyone in possession of the Pear Beginner’s Guide to Art Fairs, any seemingly meaningful relationship between different works is, as a rule, purely coincidental. Anyone familiar with the genius of David Destino, however, has every reason to believe the great man has, for the good of art, broken the rules yet again. Unfortunately, one cannot buy such revolutionary acts, but the next best thing is a limited edition signed print of Destino’s iconic De-De-De-Defaced Cyber-Virgin image. As was expected, the edition sold out on the opening morning of the fair, but was replaced with a batch of signed copies of the artist’s new autobiography The Genius of Destino along with complimentary copies of the Pear Art Fair Yearbook 2023-24,(5) and equilibrium was restored. (MLeB)

Kay Partovi
Pear Museum, L.A. Stand A2

The immanent opening of the ‘From the Ground Up’ new media festival in Downtown L.A. played a major part in determining the contents of Kay Partovi’s exhibition at the Pear Art Fair, 2023. ‘From the Ground Up’ is, this year, co-curated by Partovi who – along with Marguerite Gruin and Coretta Meyes – has ‘sub-curated’ the festival to seemingly disparate art practitioners Patricia Babcox and Judy Willwerth in ‘an attempt to counteract the proliferation of new-media-specific events in a supposedly post-medium-specific age’.(6) The centerpiece of Partovi’s contribution to the Pear Art Fair, Curadar, comprised a double hologramatic projection showing live PearSpy® footage of Babcox and Willwerth going about the final preparations for the festival, which opens on Saturday May 20th (the day the Pear Art Fair closes). The hologramatic projections offered several interactive elements, one of which allowed viewers to scan back through footage to view earlier curatorial encounters between Babcox and Willwerth at a time when the pair were not at loggerheads and were still attempting to reconcile their artistic differences in a professional manner. Another interactive feature allowed viewers to zoom in and pan out from the action at the touch of a button. The ‘hands-on’ nature of the piece and its easy accessibility – at the entrance of the tented city – ensured Partovi’s work was a popular choice with the public. Although public popularity is a necessary string in the bow of any contemporary artist, it is, undoubtedly, important to maintain a degree of artistic integrity by striking a balance between spectacle on one hand and intelligent investigation on the other. Curadar achieves this balance by making accessible to the public (through the application of the aforementioned interactive tools) a work whose subject matter refers exclusively to the inner workings of the artworld. (SS)

Joy Allison
Pear Museum, L.A. Stand A3

If the artist formerly known as Emily Cullman is responsible for putting religious art back on the map, then Joy Allison has cemented its place on the radar of state-of-the-art cartographical software, Pearth® and some. Making her Pear Art Fair debut, Allison created a remarkably sophisticated soundscape which spanned the length and breadth of the grounds of the fair. Taking as a starting point a cappella material she had recently recorded for the purpose of her Songs of Joy release on Pear Trax, Allison set about adding to, subtracting from, splicing and re-editing such sound with a view to playing it from PearSpeakers® dotted strategically around the fair. From the opening ceremony onwards, each speaker emitted a different element of Allison’s edit, offering visitors a time-based, fragmented experience, a preview of the overall composition which was available in vintage vinyl format at Stand A3 of the tented city. Typical of Allison’s suspicion of, and contempt for, commercialization, this appetizer proves frustrating for most consumers, who will not own the vintage equipment needed to play the disc. Although each element of the track could, conceivably, be recorded on site at the fair via one’s Pearpod®, a technician of Allison’s skill and experience would be required in order to process and render meaningful these seemingly arbitrary sounds. Here, in characteristically critically-self-aware manner, Allison plays on her status as part of a moribund breed of skilled persons whose learned abilities cannot (as yet) be substituted by machines. Beyond this apparently self-satisfying gesture, in presenting for sale these desirable yet, for most purchasers, useless objects, Allison questions our compulsion to buy at all costs. Ultimately, one cannot help but suspect Allison sees something that the rest of us do not. Perhaps this is her point. (SS)

Ernest Eakins
Pear Museum of Contemporary Art, L.A. Stand B1

Ernest Eakins’ To Square One (and Back Again) is a rhetorical tour-de-force. Comprising several found images, the series is Eakins’ response to the advent of human translocation, paying particular attention to the inevitable deterioration of the infrastructure that was put in place many years ago to cater for traditional modes of transport. In a nod to a famous Crossism – of which no-one needs reminding – Eakins claims to have dreamt he had translocated himself so many times he no longer knew where he was. This feeling of disorientation apparently re-awakened Eakins to the beauty of slowness and has triggered an enduring interest in outmoded means of transport like the supersonic airplane and even the blessed motor car. His (remarkably vivid) dream – supposedly made up of vignettes, each portraying an individual mode of transport – was mysteriously punctuated by a recurring image of an upside-down bridge. As a consequence, Eakins’ collection of found imagery is decidedly bridge-biased, although it was only very recently the artist came across the very inverted bridge believed to have haunted his dream. The said reproduction was identified as none other than John Stezaker’s Bridge VI, the original of which has recently been purchased by P.M.o.C.A. to enable Eakins to fulfill his project, and, in so doing, exorcise a few ghosts. In the most straightforward of gestures, Eakins has turned the image upside down to render transparent the mechanisms that revive the orthodox narratives that have been suppressed for so long and, with that, equilibrium is restored. (MLeB)

Jimi Lopez
Pearplex, L.A.
Stand C1

MJ Jimi Lopez has enjoyed a meteoric rise to stardom following his landmark performance (Almost) Live in the Remix as part of last year’s ‘Pearplex’d’ exhibition in Los Angeles. Since being signed by Pear Trax, just days after that memorable occasion, Lopez has traveled the world spreading the word about his groundbreaking audio-visual techniques. He also arranged a series of special performances late last year where, ‘for one night only, Lopez puts his digital adventures on hold and returns to his first love: two turntables and a box of records.’(7) One such performance – at Pear Connect Club, Vilnius, Lithuania – was notable for an impromptu proto-informaskat intervention into Danny Krivit’s re-edit of Loleatta Holloway’s Runaway, by self-proclaimed master of ceremonies, the clone of Gabriel Lester. Similarly, Lopez’s performance at Pear Institute of Contemporary Art, London, UK was riddled(8) with peculiarity; early in his set, a rogue violinist inadvertently plugged his instrument into the mixer and proceeded to accompany Arthur Russell’s Go Bang before it became so excruciating that Lopez deemed it necessary to fade out the sound. Unaware of his disconnectedness, the intoxicated violinist continued to fiddle for some time before rapid-techno-accompaniment-induced fatigue brought about his resignation from the fray. Having survived this early audio assault, Lopez was, ultimately, to fall victim to an attack of the physical variety. At 4 a.m. – peak time – having seamlessly introduced White Horse by Laid Back into the mix, Lopez was bundled off the decks by a seemingly crazed figure sporting religio-hillbilly-through-a-beverly-hills-high-fashion-sensibility attire. The figure – who, it emerged, was artist had, earlier in the day, given a talk on Pear, God and Money(9) amongst other things – then brought White Horse to an abrupt end, before blasting out Nigel Brooks’ arrangement of Kum Baya to the, admittedly jubilant, crowd. The emotional release caused by this slow-building epic arrangement of biblical proportions brought about embraces between reveling artworldlings whose paths had never previously crossed, before proceedings were brought to an untimely close by notoriously prima donna-ish P.I.C.A. curator, N.J.N. Moansheff. Alas, such live performance, and all it entails with regard to its unpredictability, is not conducive to the rigidity of the art fair format. As Lopez was on his second world tour during the time of the Pear Art Fair, he contributed a batch of signed replicas of the platinum disc he received in honor of his First Love tour. Needless to say, the discs served their purpose and sold like hot pear-and-blue-cheese cakes. (SS)

Janine James
Kenneth Mader Ltd, New York
Stand D3

Janine James was commissioned by Pear Projects® to produce a collection of site-specific work for this year’s fair. While exhibiting work at a prominent stand in the main hub of the tented city, James also proposed a new version of her THIS IS series which included the installation of several sculptures and the intervention into existing objects throughout the grounds of the fair and in the wider context of Pear Square and the city of Los Angeles. Each object – some of which will remain in situ following the dismantlement of the fair – has in common a PearSynthetics® vinyl attachment reading, ‘THIS IS’, for example, ‘THIS IS A FENCE.’ The origins, with regard to the sculptural (or otherwise) credentials of the object, rely on the ‘local knowledge’ of the viewer. Making the works readable only to persons familiar with the lie of the land necessarily grants the citizens of central Los Angeles access to an exclusive club. While playing on Kelvin Cooper’s thesis on the supposed importance of secrecy in the maintenance of societies,(10) this could also be understood as a statement of solidarity, or empathy, with a community whose locality has been subjugated, for the duration of the art fair, by highbrow Air Pear® jetsetters.
Although seriousness and irony are by no means mutually exclusive, James is recognized for eschewing playful postmodern irony in favor of deadpan postpostmodern anti-irony. Irony creates distance and facilitates a non-committal stance which does not suit the seriousness of James’ work. She makes no direct link with contemporary art; it is, in fact, difficult to categorize her work in the context of today’s art. What sets her position apart in contemporary art is this absence of irony(11) and the lack of any reference to art(12) and self reference.(13) Yet the artist is not alone with regard to offering an (admittedly, critically self-aware) apathetic view of the world. Today, several San Francisco-based artists are turning their backs on the critically-engaged Los Angeles scene and discovering an affinity with spirituality, rationalism and traditional furniture design as demonstrated by the Weaverville folk art scene. This neglect of the political and of external social realities leads to inner domestic worlds, to an art that avoids direct confrontation, that neither criticizes nor accuses. Instead, it renders inner domesticity full of pragmatics, cultivates a straightforward approach to reality and shares the artist’s own designs for life with the viewer, opening up a whole new perspective of one’s own existence. (RMcC)

Mark Zadikov
Pear Vengeance, L.A. Stand K5

Issues of access and privilege were brought into play in Mark Zadikov’s manipulation of the Pear Vengeance stand at the Pear Art Fair, during which only holders of the Monday Club password were allowed to enter, through a back door (Sometimes It Just Turns Out That Way, 2023).
As rigorous as the gesture was, it distorted the realities it so boldly seemed to reference; while there is no situation in which only holders of the Monday Club password would be allowed into a particular space (except, of course, on a Monday), people really are crying in the streets of L.A. as they try desperately (and unnecessarily, given the advent of telepathy) to figure out the code. One might expect referential precision from Zadikov, as possession of passwords and codes not least relate to people’s value as citizens – a value central to his concern. His usual strategy, for the duration of any given piece, is to divert people who are desperate enough for status (young artists, ambitious entrepreneurs, sexual predators and combinations of the above) into the white cube. He then ‘stains’ it with the concrete reality of obscene professional climbing,(14) while consciously taking advantage of it himself. In 2022, Zadikov hired actors to play the parts of influential collectors, critics, curators and dealers, and stand in the gallery space for three hours during an opening at Art Vengeance, L.A. Twenty such people were hired, a number calculated to create a ratio of five avid networkers to every one pseudo-artworld-powerbroker (Climbers and Imaginary Footholds, 2022). The official description of the piece on Zadikov’s website mentions that, apparently, ‘one of the ‘try-hard’ artists attending the opening went as far as to sleep with a pseudo-curator in an attempt to land a solo show at an imaginary museum.’(15) As it transpired, the actor playing the part of the curator actually fell for the enthusiastic young networker and, following the untidy business of explaining to the art hopeful that the whole thing was a performance, the youngster began to accept the reflected glory of the actor’s fine performance and set about forging a career in acting himself.(16) Although Climbers and Imaginary Footholds is, undoubtedly, a more convincing and referentially-sound piece of work, one must take into account that Sometimes It Just Turns Out That Way was conceived during a difficult period for the artist, a time when, not only the future of his gallery, but also his status as a member of the Monday Club, was in jeopardy. Thankfully, the intervention of Pear Corp has ensured a positive future for Art Vengeance but, unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Monday Club, whose operations have been suspended following the death of its initiator, Gibson Blocker. That said, pioneering Pear scientist Joel Eppinger III has retrieved the necessary quantity of tissue from Blocker’s infamous Freedom in a Box in order to produce a healthy clone of the deceased artist and safeguard the future of the Monday Club. Mark Zadikov: watch this space and, in the meantime, show faith in Blocker’s very own testament: ‘The truest artist is a tormented soul and, during times of the greatest torment, spawned is the truest art.’(17) (SS)

Folk Art: Weaverville Stand Q13

The inaugural, and much contested, contribution of Folk Art: Weaverville to Pear Art Fair was indifferent, to say the least. Limited to showing only one artist and allocated a space more akin to a filing cabinet than an art fair stand, FA:W’s showing was so uncool, it was cool. The artist formerly known as Emily Cullman’s psychological problems, and consequent retreat to her home town of Weaverville, have been well documented, and her extraordinary appearance here was characteristic of someone in deep personal, professional and spiritual turmoil. ’s sabbatical from the Pear Resident Practitioner Program deemed her eligible to be shown by a third party and, after occupying Pear Museum’s coveted Stand A2 in the two preceding fairs, to be represented this year by FA:W in Stand Q13 was comparable to Sam Prespeta competing on Court 21 of Pear Sportsplex® at the Pear Master of Masters Play-off®. ’s relegation to the lower reaches of the fair’s pecking order was, it must be said, self-initiated and did, undoubtedly, generate publicity for areas of the fair usually frequented only by ‘trainspotters’(18) and the visually impaired. Quite apart from the perplexity of ’s dislocation from the main hub of activity, the work presented was wildly removed from anything with which one could ever imagine the artist being associated. Any preconceived vision of an array of immaculately-produced ™ religious paintings was banished on entering the stand/cabinet; on show was the result of a remarkably accomplished (at least for a painter) conceptual project. The night before the opening of the fair, had set up camp(19) in Wimbledon(20)-enthusiast-esque fashion outside Stand A1, securing position A1 in the queue for limited-edition Destino Cyber-Virgin prints, before rising in the morning to snap up all twenty-four prints21 and retreat to set up her exhibition before the crowds reached Stand Q13. Awaiting them was a cuboid, constructed of the twenty-four framed prints, all facing outwards. The piece – named Mise-en-Abîme – hinted at a presence within the box; something mysterious, perhaps too ghastly or, indeed, too beautiful for public view. This masking of an image by an image harks back to René Magritte’s La Condition Humaine, 1933 – curiously, a work has publicly shunned, citing Magritte’s (allegedly) amateurish handling of paint as syllapuric. Perhaps ’s psychological turmoil has triggered an artistic epiphany, constituting an awareness of her own prejudices and a consequent reconciliation of the histories of painting and conceptual art. With the conception of Mise-en-Abîme, equilibrium in the world of is restored. (MLeB & SS)

Mikki LeBeau is a regular contributor to Pear Journal. He is course leader of American Dream Studies at PearUni®IV in Chicago where he recently initiated an artists’ and entrepreneurs’ residency program open to students of all PearUni®s.

Rosemarie McCabe has worked in the arts and higher education since the late 2010s. Trained as a postpostmodern art historian, she held full-time faculty positions at PearUni®II, New York, and Pear Uni®V, Boston, and served as chair of General Studies at Pear Art Institute. For the past five years, she has been Chief Academic Officer at Pear Institute of the Arts. She is currently a partner in Pear Productions and is co-directing a documentary about Pear Uni®s with hologramatic projectionist Susanne Shirey.

Over the last year, Susan Sinden has co-founded and served as Creative Director for Pear PD, a post-digital media studio, and online marketing agency Pear Worldwide. She has recently completed her book This Is Not Magritte.

1. The origins of the tented city stem back to the modest tented villages constructed as part of sporting events of the past such as golf’s British Open. The Open’s tented village catered for the needs of visitors and officials alike, providing shops and refreshments, amongst other conveniences. While the notion of the tented village has moved with the times and made way for the tented city, the Open and, indeed, competitive golf itself have sadly ceased to be, due to golf’s governing bodies’ inability to adapt to recent advances in technology. The introduction of the most formidable golf club in the game’s history, the Big Peartha® – attached through the player’s flesh/hardware interface – allowed competitors to propel the ball well over 450 yards at a preprogrammed velocity (which could be altered mid-flight to allow for interference such as crosswinds and precipitation). No golf course in the world was a match for a golfer equipped with the latest updates of Big Peartha® software and, before too long, any spectacle was limited to viewing the oldest and least technologically-minded players vying for places behind the pack (each of whom had completed their round in eighteen strokes). This predicament prevailed for several years and, although PearSythetics® benefited substantially from increased sales of green jackets, spectator numbers plummeted and each extension in golf course length was eclipsed by advances in software until it became clear that golf’s future lay exclusively in the leisure industry.
2. Gilbert Winston quoted in K. Brine, ‘The Tented City’ in Pear Art Fair Yearbook 2023-24, (Los Angeles: Pear Press, 2023), p. 12.
3. With new online software, Pearth®, one can swoop down to any location on the globe with exhilarating ease, the satellite views being of such remarkable clarity that, after a precipitous plunge from outer space, one can end up suspended five meters above the roof of one’s own apartment, or even inside the apartment. Having said this, Pearth® does not possess contour and contents data for every single household on the planet. Householders are invited to submit images of the interiors of their homes from which Pearth® scientists can generate three-dimensional imagery suitable for dissemination. For those not satisfied with the appearance of their actual interior, Pear Interior Veneers® provides a sophisticated template service, featuring a vast range of interiors to best suit your character (see www.pearinteriorveneers.com).
4. In the latter years of the Tour de France (before widespread translocation software abuse replaced doping offences as the competitive norm, thus reducing the cycle race to a farcical non-event whereby, every year, at least forty cyclists ‘won’ and any spectacle was limited to viewing the conformist, drug-loyal backmarkers enduring their journey of infinitely longer duration) the numerous joint-leaders of the race and current world champions would wear a PearRainbow® jersey. This predicament prevailed for several years and, although PearSythetics® benefited substantially from increased spandex sales, spectator numbers plummeted and not even a ten-to-the-power-of-n-fold course length extension could compensate for the abuse of this ultimate travel software until it became clear that cycling’s future lay exclusively in the leisure industry.
5. The official publication of the Pear Art Fair 2023 is the Pear Art Fair Yearbook 2023-2024. It acts as a catalog and also provides an invaluable snapshot of contemporary art for this year. Edited to show the best of what Pear Art Fair and the artworld has to offer, this essential guide is an art lover’s bible. Each gallery was invited to nominate two of their most exciting and original artists to be shown at the fair and be reviewed by Pear Journal critics within the yearbook. This illustrated overview of the international contemporary art scene, with 508 pages and 350 illustrations, is currently available at all PearBooks® stores.
6. M. Gruin, K. Partovi and C. Meyes (eds.) The Triple-Headed Phoenix: Rising from the Syllapura of Onitsed, (Los Angeles: Pear Press, 2023), p. 205.
7. From the press release of Jimi Lopez’s First Love world tour, (Los Angeles: Pear Trax), 2022
8. or, I suppose, fiddled.
9. A transcript of ’s talk at P.I.C.A. will be available soon at www.pearjournal.com. In the meantime, the Pear Online Open and Accountable Psychoanalysis Register® (P.O.O.A.P.R.®) offers a comprehensive interpretation of the relationship between the dominant themes, movements and gestures of ’s talk and her deep-rooted personal, professional and emotional trauma. Findings include suggestions that, over the course of her career, has grown to resent the freedom of expression exercized in the work and lives of contempories Destino and Lopez. Through her religious faith, has categorically avoided the use of sexually explicit imagery and performative (and other) promiscuity, the likes of which are prominent in the works of Destino and Lopez. Since detaching herself from her Christian roots, however, and embracing all manner of occult ideologies, the artist formerly known as Emily Cullman has assumed a symbol which questions the validity of God and Pear. With her new found spiritual and professional freedom, has adopted a whole new approach to her life and work, chosing to sabbotage the works of her colleagues (she has been linked to the disappearance of Destino’s Cyber-Virgin mannequin with which it has been alleged she has been practising voodoo) and to display a radically experimental outlook towards her own work. P.O.O.A.P.R.® would also suggest that has recently become conscious of formerly-repressed sexual longing for Destino. News of his illegitimate child with an undisclosed, high-profile curator have proven particulary hard for her to stomach (see www.pooapr.com).
10. See K. Cooper, The Society of the Secret, (Los Angeles: Pear Press, 2023).
11. When challenged that, to state that ‘a chair is a chair’ must, necessarily, be an ironic gesture for, otherwise, it could serve only to patronize and insult the intelligence of the viewer, James replied, ‘My work is most certainly not ironic and is very generous to the public. Many of my text interventions, for example, include a Braille translation for the benefit of the visually impaired. Also, my website is trainspotter-friendly, packed with statistics detailing such trivialities as what I had for breakfast on the mornings I made the respective works.’
12. When questioned on the uncanny resemblance of her THIS IS project to René Magritte’s This is not… series of paintings, James replied, ‘I am not familiar with Magritte’s work so I cannot possibly comment.’
13. When alerted to the fact that her sculpture THIS IS A CHAIR AS WELL would appear to reference an earlier piece THIS IS A CHAIR, James responded, ‘THIS IS A CHAIR AS WELL actually references all the chairs in the world apart from THIS IS A CHAIR.’
14 Ferocious career-development-minded interaction as opposed to naked sport with ropes.
15. See www.pearjournal.com/artists/zadikov.htm
16. Zadikov has since employed the young actor in a performance, citing his first-hand experience as crucial to the success of the project. During this performance, the artist-turned-actor was seduced by a young artist whose forthrightness apparently reminded him of himself. Since Zadikov’s tour of the L.A. artist-run gallery scene, the Pear Drama School, L.A., experienced a dramatic increase in applications to its newly-devised Neo-Realist Performance module. While the Pear Drama School goes from strength to strength, all artist-run galleries in L.A. have since ceased to operate, with the exception of Art Vengeance whose contribution to the art fair this year was made possible by Pear. Contrary to popular belief, Art Vengeance did not refuse to sell Pear the work of recent graduate, Shirlee Brumley, and Pear did not, subsequently in anger, give Art Vengeance a capital offer they could not refuse for total control of the gallery. Conversely, Pear stepped in to help the gallery in a time of financial crisis, a step which, had it not been taken, would have resulted in the bankruptcy of the gallery and, obviously, an inability to participate in this most important of art fairs.
17. Gibson Blocker quoted in G. Nicolosi, Every Artist is a Terrorist, (Los Angeles: Pear Press, 2023), p. 56.
18. In art circles, what is referred to as a ‘trainspotter’ is someone who is dedicated to the spotting of artworks, obsessing over every imaginable statistic in any way connected to the conceiving/making/hanging/selling etc. of a particular work.
19. For this purpose employed survival architecture fashioned for the purpose of recent social services work in Malawi (see P. Krosch, ‘Foreword’ in Pear: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry, Issue 08, 2022, (Los Angeles: Pear Press, 2022), p. 1).
20. For the thousands who flocked to Wimbledon, a European sporting event of the past, there was no avoiding the sideshow to the tennis that took up as much time as the sport: the queues. A lengthy amount of time standing/camping in line on the streets of London was inevitable for those who missed out on tickets in the public ballot. The popularity of the sport did, however, take a considerable downturn following the introduction of the most formidable tennis racket in the game’s history. The Pear Flamethrower II® – attached through the player’s flesh/hardware interface – allowed the server to propel the ball at a preprogrammed speed of up to 250 m.p.h in the desired direction. Not even players fitted-out with the latest Pear Backfire III® service return software updates were ever a match for the Pear Flamethrower II®. Eyewitness reports suggesting that table tennis player, Gavin Rumgay, sporting a vintage Mizuno racket while taking part in a charity pro-am tennis event in Japan, actually succeeded in returning a ball served by a player wielding a Pear Flamethrower II® are unsubstantiated. The umpire of the game, during which the alleged miracle took place, cites a state of mind-numbing tedium brought about by several years of never having witnessed a rally (in the traditional sense of the word) as a possible reason for having overlooked this supposed achievement. When Rumgay returned to the table tennis arena, his reputed tennis masterstroke passed reluctantly into the realm of urban myth. Over the subsequent five years, every competitive tennis match reverted to a routine whereby not one serve was returned until around the third day of play, at which point fatigue kicked in and the game descended into a battle of endurance, one or other competitor collapsed and his opponent was pronounced the victor. Although PearSythetics® benefited substantially from increased sales of body armor, spectator numbers plummeted until it became clear that the future of tennis lay exclusively in the leisure industry.
21. Utilizing capital from her Pear Resident Practitioner Program Sabbatical Fund (P.R.P.P.S.F.).