i'm always struck by the emails KOGO posts to RHIZOME, but never sure i
get them, or the net.art projects to which they refer. so recently i
wrote to KOGO in search of clarification.

if you don't recall kogo's emails, like many good
net.art.email.announcements, they invite people to the candyfactory site
to evaluate or participate in net art projects. here is an old post of
theirs from february (please note bizarre reference to Robert Mitchum),
followed by my correspondence with kogo:

+ + +

X-Sender: ga2750@pop.i.bekkoame.or.jp
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 20:26:42 +0900
To: list@rhizome.com
From: ga2750@i.bekkoame.or.jp (KOGO)
Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: RHIZOME_RAW: All of the world , Say alone
"McDonald's"
X-Loop-Detect: 1
Sender: raw@rhizome.com
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: ga2750@i.bekkoame.or.jp (KOGO)
Status: U

ENTANGLED SIMILE / AGAINST SHADOW WORK
http://www.bekkoame.or.jp/i/ina-1744/stilllife/p.html
prostitutes files for our gallery's area . They are from many country.

Please send me your voice file in your accent
Say "McDonald's"

Mouchette / Sachiko Iwakami / Shoji Kasahara / Minoru Inayoshi / Kazunari Ho
riguchi / John
Wayne / Robert Mitchyam and anonymous prostitutes

Takuji KOGO
candy factory

NEW WORKS FOR TERMINAL CARE
CHECK OUR SITE
http://www.bekkoame.or.jp/i/ina-1744/

+ + +

Rachel: i am very much interested in your work. i know i have written to
you before, but i want to organize an article about some of your
projects. do you have any material or information in english i could
read?

KOGO: I'll try to prepare something in correct English. Anyway, thanks
for your interest and joining our project "sense of order" I'll put
web-page and our gallery your painting "heathcliff" (Jacques Rivette's
"Hurlevent" is my one of favorite movie!) Please send me some image for
your portrait. I always make mistakes in English. I don't know if my
weird English communicates, but I hope it sounds something like R.D.
Laing's clients or a 30s or 40's Hollywood Film immigrant. (or one of
Stephen King's mad men?) Maybe I will try to be more correct.

R: how did you start working with mouchette?

We started on E-mail after looking at one another's websites. I was
really interested in her performance on her website. I thought her
tactics were quite clever for this media. So I asked mouchette to join
our gallery. And I participated in her performance + concept.

R: what did you like about it? it is clear to me that you like being
able to push death and gore and pornography and violence–all of which
thrive on the Internet, but not necessarily in net.art…

K: I thought, simply, she is lying, but she exists in this world. Her
work is like some pornographic sites. For example, porn sites are
operated by men, and females are there pretending to be exhibitists. I
think Mouchette makes an ironic parody about "web-site/web sight"

R: what's up with the battle of tang movies? can you explain the
reference? i'm afraid i don't know it. and "against fetishism?" is this
against a kind of orientalism?

K: Now my favorite way of saying is "We hope to protect art from art
lovers." For example, now Duchamp's works are loved for their oldness
that gives AURA or something nostalgiac. Sometimes I feel minimal art
has too much technical beauty, and then its strategic meanings are
obscured. (So I think most great artists in this style are Mr+Mrs Vogel.
They payed for some plans which might never be carried out) I hope our
works are against any "texture" of taste.

R: mr and mrs vogel?

Mr and Mrs. Vogel are famous collectors, now their collection is in the
National Gallery of Art in Washington. Very interesting people, I think.
Mr. Vogel was a post-office clerk. Since the late 60's, they invested in
many minimalist artists. In an interview for a TV program they said
"We're not to make one cent from our collection." I think only negative
and funny passions about art like theirs can make art not be a political
force. They are not history makers or some texture fetishists. I called
them "artists" [in the correspondence] intentionally. Do you know them?
They are living in NY or near the city. I want to contact them for our
interview book. I think American art must be proud of people like them
(they're not euro-trash or not millionaires, just citizens) more than
"MOMA" or some famous galleries.)

But I often use websites like a sketchbook. I'm always waiting for a
little thought to be be grown by somebody else.

With my other project "sense of order" (in which you participated) I am
trying to make "beautiful minimal art" for individual tastes. And I'm
faking "antiquarianism" on Battle of 3CG to use "qtvr" with "a local
taste." Maybe in this media too, precision techniques make uninteresting
images, same as "multiples." I hope our works further reflects fetishism
with an undercurrent of morbidity. So I substituted victims of
terrorism, mascots, murderers. Sometime I use local images in my works.
In a way, this is interesting for me, because I think it works
strategically towards "universality." I like to create many misreadings
about our works.

Fetishism: I think fetishism is always made by persistence of an
unconscious idea. Fetishizing some styles creates too much quality. Then
the idea's meaning is lost on account of the requisite degree of
quality. Anyway like Marx says, this is an idea. Quality for deal, money
as fetish… "universality."

There is little difference between universalist and racist or fasist in
the way. Mad scientists make a texture of universal style for quality
like art lovers. But "Fetish" belong to one peculiar culture. So I hope
to make "universality" look like one peculiar culture. I said before
"Art is belong to western culture/Art is not culture in the we stern
culture etc" on this project. Of course I know that nowadays many
minority artists exist. But sometime I think this idea "Art" is useless
like many big ideas. It seems to me that it is only for "history" or
"market."

Let alone I don't care about high art or low art. "Hokusai" became high
art because of western culture. On the web, you feel more
"anti-hierarchical"–sometimes I think so. I could meet many people on
the Web, and this is a beautiful thing, a funny thing.

In Japan, Andy Warhol's Campbell soup often gave people an image as
"Great Big One" or "American life With Pleasure," not giving its irony,
so it was used commercial decoration. But probably he didn't care. Now,
Campbell soup reminds us of his works.

R: why the picture of the head with blood?

K: This image from an newspaper. A victim of Terrorism. I just changed
the colors.

R: i want to know more…

K: I want more from you too. Sometime RHIZOME is too optimistic about
this media for me. But your works are interesting. It is not for only
incontinent images. I read RHIZOME's history of what Mr. Mark is doing.
I'm not interested in the web's technical development. But I think we
could do something different from official art places or commercial
galleries.

Now I'm preparing to publish some books and magazine. At first, we will
gather some interviews. These works will be announced on the Net like
your works, and we will distribute copies via candyfactory. When we
gather some colorful interviews, we want to publish a magazine or book
with some distribution company. The title will be "COLOR01" with
monochrome format.

By the way, We have another guest John Miller who is N.Y artist. Do you
know him? He presents his works at Metro Pictures ( using shit color!).
*His recent projects are photo project about leisure time "Middle of the
Day" and degital paintings about TV game show. I think he try to against
"media" as second nature. Technology always grow up to Mass culture with
making people's unconsciousness. His works show our unconscious
obssesions concretely. And maybe you know the interesting essay *"Dada
by the Numbers" he wrote a bout Bruce Nauman in "October?"

I don't want to make closed works–I want to engage other interesting
people (and not only artists). But I don't want, and can't control many
people like with some net events.

R: how do you know john miller? are you involved in the art world in
japan? where are you in japan? tokyo?

K: I'm in Tokyo, and our gallery is in Yokohama that is a port city near
Tokyo. With John, *our menber Horiguchi met him at Kitakyushu in Japan,
and then he came to see our site. I got his e mail address. And I'm very
much interested in his works. I asked him to join our web site. So now
we are collaborating.

R: what else?

K: Now we are going new show "After The Battle/These Definete Articles",
I can't explain why this installation gives me good feelings. I will put
images about the show in our site soon. I titled each article "the."
After french philosophy seeped into art-criticism, it seems the
avant-garde as a genre continued to get new literary reasons, but
sometime it all looks like a B movie's set. So in a way, the important
thing is only the relation of the title to the decoration, like with
surrealist works. (In the way I think we could look at David Hammonds'
work. Sometime his works is wonderful for its slovenliness.)