The latest report on Net Art News of a "Debt Free with Site and Sass" with a link to http://www.savekaryn.com is a disgrace. If this is "news" worthy of the Rhizome membership then we are in a sad state indeed.

At best, the reported site looks like a very simple example of the easy genre of the "my life is art" school. Even worse, its business content far outweighs the "art" and the primary purpose of the site seems to be to sell ordinary merchandise. So at worst it looks like an omen of the destruction of Rhizome and its artistic standards, such as they are, by confusion between art and commerce.

Are we now going to see a deluge of news about little businesses disguised as artworks? Here is the template: Set up a site in which the protagonist deals with one of the myriad problems faced by people (overweight, underweight, hair loss, too much hair, lack of muscle, loss of energy, excess of energy, etc., etc.) and then offer branded products to overcome the problem. Before we know it we may have infomercials in the Rhizome news. Perhaps this can be tapped into as a source of revenue.

I thought it might be interesting to juxtapose the inexplicably fawning announcement of this new low on Net Art News with the standards supposedly used by Rhizome to collect art in the Artbase. I have copied the "news" and the Rhizome artbase standards below.

I realize that the Net Art News is not governed by the standards for admission to the artbase. But surely there are works and events out there that are more newsworthy, simply because they are more consistent with the purposes and interests of Rhizome members.

Daniel Young

[Young confesses to a personal bias against Net Art News for its failure to report the recent launch of a streaming "ticker" version of his beloved NewZoid. Perhaps if Young asks the world for help, collects money and other goodies and then launches a line of products with the NewZoid logo it will be cutesy and feel-goody and commercial enough to be newsworthy.]




1. Rhizome Net Art News Jan 14, 2003

Keith Obadike auctioned off his blackness at Ebay. John Freyer sold his personal possessions at AllMyLifeForSale.com. Karyn erased her $20,000 credit card debt in less than 5 months thanks to the generosity of total strangers. You may be asking yourself is this for real (also the first question in Karyn's FAQ section), and she responds: "I really am a chick who asked for help to pay off her credit card debt, and it really did work!" SaveKaryn.com is not a symbolic art act nor is it a parody of female stereotypes. It is a sincere sales-pitch that turned into a small enterprise. Now that the debt is gone Karyn sells "SaveKaryn" merchandise (t-shirts, Frisbees and lunchboxes) and gives kudos to "SaveKaryn" spin-off sites that abound. Karyn dug herself into a money pit thanks to a shopping disorder and wiggled her way out via a barebones site and a little side of sass. –Brooke Singer

2. Rhizome Artbase Standards

The Rhizome ArtBase includes works of new media art