Interview Yourself is Online!

The first group of Interviews for the "Interview Yourself"
(IY-IY-IY-IY-IY) project - (see below) are now online at
http://plagiarist.org/iy

Max Herman, nn, www.0100101110110101.org,
eyescratch, and Frederic Madre
interviewed by the people who know them best!

(note - some people e-mailed texts which i was not sure were interviews
for publication or personal correspondence… if yours isn't here and
you expected it to be - or vice versa - plz e-mail
interview@plagiarist.org for rectification.)

enrollment is open and interviews are accepted on an ongoing basis!
the new address for submissions is:
interview@plagiarist.org

plagiarist.org, an equal opportunity plagiarist

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Howdy,

On nettime a couple weeks ago, some of you might have caught the
discussion of net.art history, net art history, net_art_history, and so
on. And the topic came up of the everpopular technique of
critic-interviews-net.artist, which it can be argued, helps create a
net.art.star system, whereby artists might suddenly find themselves
rising to stardom then unceremonisioulsy declared dead, or worse, not
starrified by the interview system at all. Meanwhile, some of the
critics feel rather overworked.

And therefore, to help with it all, I proposed the automagic "Interview
Yourself" project. Since a few nettimers have in fact responded with
actual interviews, I will begin posting them on plagiarist.org shortly..
(i.e. as soon as I get more than 5 contiguous minutes of free time.)

So naturally I would like to open this up to more than just nettime
readers… the whole idea is that it is open to everybody…
net_artists, net_critics, etc., it's good clean fun the entire family
can enjoy! (And what better way to convert that ultra-private, brooding
space of internal dialogue into public netspace? Your head on the net!)

So, here's the gist of the original post; keep those cards and letters
rolling in and hope u have fun:

+ + +

The critics are short on time, and having them spend it doing interviews
just creates a bunch of Art Stars - it's essentially a whole new Art
World created in the process of trying to flee the old one… and look
what we've got; overworked critics, unhappy net artists… this won't
do….

I propose a new approach, as part of the Plagiarist "New Millenium
Disorder" project: The Interview Yourself Project. Since it will
hopefully generate lots of interviews, the acronym will be the
"IY-IY-IY-IY-IY" Project. Everyone, please interview yourself, and post
your interview to the usual mailing lists; heck, I'll even make a whole
website for the archives if people submit them.

Think of the benefits… it subverts the Net Art World Institution, and
makes everyone a star…. or, uh, makes nobody a star, depending on how
you want to look at it… it finally gives the interviewees a chance to
answer the kinds of questions they *wish* they'd be asked about their
work… it gives us shy people who sometimes clam up with real
interviewers the chance to finally open up in an interview… and, it
saves wear and tear on critics and journalists! Concerned that the tough
questions won't get asked? Not to worry; IY-IY-IY-IY-IY doesn't preclude
critics from doing interviews, just sort of er, open sources the
interview process. (I just love working "open source" in anywhere I
can… )

So, hop to it everybody! (you too, critics!) you've got an interview to
prepare - History Awaits!