Mark Waugh for Rhizome

Lassie comes home @isea98
Last night me and grunts hit the delerious streets of Liverpool after
the last event we were supposed to cover for the webcast was blown out .
Three fire alarms were a little over sensitive to the smoke of Corps
Indice. Suddendly the revolution looked like a Cheech & Chong flick. We
were down in China town but the Ma Bo was closed. We were burning all
our bridges and ankles were wet with the sweat of the forced march. The
truth is out there but we were on a devious trip into the menu of some
Italian eatery dissing the open tomes of post modernity and trying to
get pizza without digital rendering.

We eat and intimate to our new Bulgarian cohort, Olga, that though she
has lived through the hazards of a Communist state, we are zen masters
of Groucho Marxism and spread the parmaesan heavily, she tolerated our
uptopian and mal adjusted spirits and translated various conceptual
toasts into Bulgarian. Thursday night and Liverpool is a weird place to
be getting drunk. The Revolution bar is packed with Stalin's daughters
and Lenin's sons. The boys are wearing shirts and say nothing about the
installation art the has trapped us in their rich alluvial mudflats.
Instead they watch us suspiciously as the girls decode our venal
glances. The suburbs of the digital city are the cul de sacs of desire.
Our platoon moved out of the Revolution and into the belly of the
Beluga. Greg Garvey was in there and he downloaded his Gender Bender
software and one of the longest e mail addresses on planet earth. It was
not until this morning that any of this made sense. I was sitting in the
main theatre of LIPA and Dave Toop was live on stage, cracking a stream
of solliliquies like Seven Eleven were giving them away with Rizlas. And
then Lassie opened an eye inquisitively and commented…

Rtmark

Having encountered one or two delegates who were flagging on the verbal
floors of isea98 I decided to risk an encounter of the pure tongue based
stuff. Masticating the encyclopaedic contents of the lecture list, with
its assorted menus and obtuse abstracts, I came across that old
favourite Rtmark. I asked around to confirm it was on. Luckily Sean
Cubitt was down with state of collapse assuring me that Rtmark were
present but anonymous until their new time @ 3.00pm. I sneaked in with
fellow mercenary Bernard Schutze and we made our way to the back of the
very plush seminar room. This option allows you to snigger and heckle
from behind a barricade of dumber punters.

These precautions were not necessary as Ray Thomas was a sophisticated
and attractive avatar of the Stockbrokers of subversion. She explained
the process of accumulating stock in the form of subversive potentials,
anything which satisfies the agenda of destabilising corporate culture.
She then outlined the various levels of investment that allow cash to be
floated until a suitable project is selected for funding. In the past
Rtmark have funded Info War, the rearticulation of Barbie and Action
Man, the phone in sick day and Deconstructing Beck. All of these
projects were reviewed on their video which was also another source of
funds although me and my trooper persuaded the lovely Ray to let us copy
it off for the webcast for nothing appropriating her assets stripping
rhetoric.

Keith Piper (British) "Robot Bodies"

Another work from the resident alien of British video art. Described
as "an exploration of the metaphorical relationship between the image of
the robot and black people in science fiction and popular culture." It
is an installation that engages in a slick archaeology of the future
past. Sojourner Truth, a six wheeled robot landed on the surface of
Mars in 1997. The robot's name was derived from an ex- slave. This was
Piper's line of flight. The interfaces are further testament to Piper's
engagement with ROM couture. The ensemble of decks sit in a cage that
replays the signature of slavery forcing the player to see the world
through bars.

The Tea Factory.

Obvious though it might be this place used to be a tea warehouse. It is
a vast space that has been furnished with cubic rooms for the
installation works during The Revolution.

Dream no. 36 by Imanol Atorrasagasti & Yan Duyvendak. (sw) This work is
a curiously engaging hybrid of hi and low tech. A series of photographs
projected with a soundtrack drift and trip across the twilight in the
near dark of dreamtime. Their style is quite kitsch evoking the work of
Pierre et Gillles but their narrative is very oblique and genuinely
disturbed.

Digital String Games by John Fairclough & Maureen Lander (nz) Sometime
back in the twenties mr Duchamp did a lot string. Back in the late 80's
clubs all over the UK got hip to the uncanny atttractors between
coloured wool and UV lights. Developing this little known or discoursed
upon practice this work uses string as a metaphorical interstices
between digital games both present and future.

Millenniumania by Nina Fischer & Madroan el Sani (ger) This is a great
idea. People in different cities walk at different speeds everyone knows
this. The beat of the street in London is not the cadence of Paris, la
la and bla bla. This work takes this concept and then twists it some.
In a constantly revolving 360 degree screen-installation the mean speed
of pedestrians in different time zones dictates the speed of the film.
In effect you get an endless race between power walkers and slack
strollers with their velocities displayed in metres per sec.

Pursuing Paradise by Nelia Just (australia)

I saw these weaving frames when the gallery was being put up and was
taken by their fragile and delicate appearance. They look like someone
had unwound an old fashioned tuner and used the copper wire to start
some mutant embroidery. They also make a noise. What more do you want?

Retinal Burn by Luke Jerram (eng) This is a viciously engaged attack on
the geometrical prejudices of most artists. The image is ultra
transient. A memory that refuses recall. I opened the curtain to the
room which said, "One person Only" or something to that effect. Out
popped the one person and I wished she'd been into a subversive
occupation of the warzone but some things are OK in the dark as solo
pleasures.

Suzanne Treister (australia) This hypertextual narrative wigs it's way
through issues of auto-identity in a smooth and slyly sexy way. Over a
year a half in construction it is part of the click and chip set.