After honoria's exasperation over not having a fun RHIZOME list, and her
question "Is there a performance art list?", Stacy Pershall replied:

I've been looking for one for ages. Tried to start a somewhat
comprehensive p-art site on the Mining Company server but got booted
after 3 months for lack of hits. Starting a mailing list was a
projected part of the plan for that site but it just couldn't defend
itself against the Star Wars/X-Files/Anne Rice pages. If you find a
good list, let us all know. And if not, maybe we should start one…

Interested in the hi/low culture thread, Danny Hobart joined in:

the way i see it, art is about culture. there's really no reason why
the star wars/x-files/anne rice pages aren't as much about art as a page
dedicated to gerhard richter. maybe they're even more about art. most
art as we know it today is aimed at a small audience of hi-income
investors and other intellectual enthusiasts. the beautiful part about
the web and the culture surrounding it is that it's blurring the lines
between artist and audience in a way that hasn't happened probably since
'pop' was a new way of thinking. a fun art list for me would be one
where people concentrated as much on telling each other about
interesting web sites (whether done intentionally as 'art' or not) and
what tv shows will do well this season as they did on intellectual
discourse. thoughts?

Pershall:

I absolutely agree that the boundaries between artist and audience
should be blurred and address that very issue (and the blurring of many
other boundaries as well) in my own work. I simply disagreed with the
way the Mining Company setup ultimately became about competition for
hits and the worth of maintaining a site on their server all boiled down
to that one qualifying factor. In fact, I personally have seen every
single episode of the X-Files and think it's swell, but I wish the
performance art site had had more of a chance to thrive in an
egalitarian environment (which is what I think the web is ideally all
about, so I moved that list of performance art links to
http://w3.one.net/~pershall, if anyone's still interested.)

Robbin Murphy wrote:

I like both the X-Files and Gerhard Richter but understand they operate
in different economic systems. Agent Mulder is more easily accessible
and I tend to accept whatever his creators give me (and buy the products
advertised). Richter I make an effort to see and Marian Goodman and
Sperone-Westwater let me in their galleries for free (DIA and the
Guggenheim charge, but I don't mind). I keep thinking about Richter's
"Atlas". I don't think much about X-Files except whether Mulder is dead
or not (I understand he's not). Both are Fun. Why do we have such a
problem here, living in America, merging both into our lives?

Andrew Fearnside joined in:

Why such a problem integrating both in our lives? Is it just the residue
of 70's leftist puritanism, or is it really troubling?

Like Danny H., I consume a wide variety of productions–XFiles on TV,
Min Tanaka on stage, Cosmo and Art Issues and my sister's collection of
old Details magazines–and am happy to see them as part of a
continuous-tone range of activity. Sometimes though I realize I invest
more interest, more of my consumptive ability, in communities in which
my voice is just a hit or a ratings percentage; and I want to engage
smaller communities, where my voice, a fuller voice, can merge with
others'. So I make danceartworks collaboratively. I think it's important
to transform consumption into dialogue–sometimes. We exist here in
medialand, and it would be false for us to disconnect from it. It's our
reality. But–there is the difference between X Files and the
performance art site: one is a record of a tooled, streamlined,
market-corrected committee creation, and the other an object from an
infinitely wider range of creative processes. Both may be grist for
dialogue.

Millions of American households have access to the X-Files. Only
thousands can come see performance art pieces. XFiles is mainstream
hyped; performance artists struggle to git some, but generally only get
it within their small community rings–art magazines at the biggest,
artist circles at the smallest. That means to consume XFiles and a
performance art review on the web are not coming from the same place on
the hype ladder. Obvious, yes, but how to phrase what that means?

Danny Hobart wrote:

do i hear a call here for better media branding of _our_
cultural/artistic events?

many artists are willing to trade off the loss of control for the
branding and media representation that ad agencies and hollywood studios
can lend to their work, perhaps there should be some movement (or just
funding) for advertising campaigns for 'independent' art endeavors as
well. gain a slightly larger market share for your
performance/installation/web site and have fun hyping it to boot. i'll
help you if you'll help me…

some relevant links