[An interesting thread ran this week on the Rhizome Raw email list. At
issue was the problematic of hierarchical structures and the
concentration of power with "the monkeys at the top of the trees." The
thread began with criticism of Rhizome's net art commissioning program
(http://rhizome.org/commissions/).]

+ + +

Eryk Salvaggio (eryk@maine.rr.com) wrote:

If it is "rhizome" dot org, why are the monkeys at the top of the tree
the only ones who get to decide where to throw the coconuts? The _raw
worms deserve to have a say, as well.

We're tired of trees.

Marc Garrett (info@furtherfield.org) replied:

I believe that people who have contributed in their various positive and
explorative ways, in debate/creative endeavours on the list are probably
not likely to be accepted for such projects. For that is not the point
or reason of us being here as far as rhizome moderators are concerned.
We are the fuel, the content, the information. Like many institutional
strategies - the talent within it, serves as promotional material. We
take part in the dirty work, the wars, but the generals get the kudos.
As you put it 'the monkeys at the top of the tree', do possess the power
by default. It seems that it is detrimental for us to actually take part
in the process of communicating to each other on this list. No matter
how great the group/individual is - just by actually commenting on the
list takes points away from being included in the projects shared by the
curators, project organizers (who never, ever want to mix with us low
types), too hot to handle is the moto from up top.

Its the law of the land even in the so called liberated Internet Net Art
communities that offer platforms for artists. I am gettng very bored
with this type of pompous isolation. It is hurtful, and too repetitive,
and only serves to reinforce the suspicion that the trickle down theory
is not working.

Eryk Salvaggio (eryk@maine.rr.com) wrote:

I think "commission" based models are banal. I think it is irrelevant to
net art. Net Art is a living art, a spontaneous art; it is an art that
is manufactured and published on a whim. To me, introducing a grant
writing process only makes it less spontaneous, and therefore, less
interesting. What I would do is to give retroactive grants to artists
whose work was already being done and overlooked.

In my opinion, if Rhizome wanted to stay relevant, and also change the
way things worked, it could revolutionize the system by allowing
retroactive grants, voted on in a democratic forum similar to net-
art.org. Here, visitors logged in, nominated works for a nomination
period, and voted on works on a scale of -10 to 10. The votes for each
site were then tallied and the top prize was prestige.

This model makes 100% perfect sense and actually challenges an out of
date art world paradigm- "commissions and proposals"- that most good
net.art is in direct opposition to. Will Rhizome adopt it? Probably not.
Something seems to have happened lately that has made rhizome's admins
extremely paranoid about their legitimacy; either that or they are too
aware of their legitimacy and are now terrified of the risks that made
rhizome interesting in the first place. A democratic process in
determining where money goes doesn't look good to people who I assume
give rhizome a large sum of their cash. What do the unwashed masses know
about art, anyway? I also think it has something to do with the
implementation of the mailing lists filter system. [Not censorship, but
the option to censor on an individual basis.] Either way, with the
Rhizome Commission, voted on by big name museum celebrities, Rhizome has
declared itself an officially hierarchical and unimaginative
organization.

I've been following the mood of Rhizome by following the discussion on
Raw and then seeing the Digest. Since Digest is the "best face" of
Rhizome-Raw, and not at all a representative [and in all fairness, it
does not claim to be, nor am I saying it should] it gives you a great
idea of what the admins "want rhizome to be" vs what it actually is.
Rhizome has realized it does not need this mailing list to survive, in
fact, list politics and behavior may actually be detrimental to it.

There's also the issue of "grants" being doled out by top guns to
curators pets, when there has been plenty of volunteer work from the
rhizome community that has gone unrewarded- splash pages, art base
contributions, etc, not to mention posts to rhizome that get used for
rhizome digest. Rhizome as an org rides the tide of good will among the
community members, which in turn helps it get grants and donations;
meanwhile, as you said, nothing trickles down; and there isn't even an
interest in what is being said. You're right, _raw is the rhizome
community and the rhizome community is what gets rhizome its attention
and its money. But we're too bitchy to form a labor union and stop
production; I suppose its just interesting that dissent has become fully
absorbed. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis.

alex galloway (alex@rhizome.org) wrote:

The purpose of Digest is to be a filtered, edited version of the traffic
on Raw. it has no pretension of being a statistical average.. i.e. Max
posts 30% of the content, so he should get 30% of the Digest real
estate. that's not the way it works =) also, i don't really consider
Digest a prize to be won. you also notice that jodi doesn't get in the
Digest very often either, but i think their ascii parsing stuff are some
of the best posts to Raw.

if you don't like Digest, i would suggest that you post your own Digest
to the list, as curt does. (thanks curt!)

Eryk Salvaggio (eryk@maine.rr.com) replied:

No, Digest is fine. The issue was never whether Digest was a prize or
whether it was good. The issue is that Digest is the conservative,
representative Rhizome product that gets sponsorship; not raw, and the
question became whether Raw was even necessary to support digest at this
point. If we all went over to Thingist, Digest would be alive and well,
would it not? The issue is that the core community here does very little
for Rhizome, despite Marc's assertion that we are vital to its survival.
In my mind, we aren't. The feeling from the trenches is that you guys
know that, and that is why you don't need to filter anything back to us,
can essentially run rhizome without feedback from the list, and do
things that are generally extremely unpopular with the list body. [Even
NPR gives you membership feedback forms when you make a donation: I've
donated intellectual capital for years. :)] The downside to this is that
Rhizome becomes isolated and insular, another part of the museum-
industrial complex, instead of a democratic, "rhizomatic" institution;
the end result is that rhizome becomes another brick in the ivory tower
[do ivory towers have bricks?] built on the early foundation of
questioning those towers and working to change them. In short, you can
ignore the raw community and stay alive, but you can't ignore the raw
community and stay interesting or relevant. [Trees need worms.] This
commission concept is out of date, and does not work for net art.

It:
- does not promote the spontaneity that makes net.art interesting.
- does not promote the democratic access that makes net.art interesting.
- does not promote the new school of criticism that makes net art
interesting.
- does not promote the ease of publication that makes net.art
interesting.
- does not promote the DIY aesthetic of net.art, which made it
interesting.
- promotes archaic ideas like "grant proposals" which do not work for
net.art .
- promotes the hierarchical, non-democratic structure of museums, which
does not work for net.art.
- works on the model of ownership of net.art, which cannot exist.

In short, your commission program is adopting imaginary qualities to
net.art, which have been adopted by groups like the Walker and the
SFMOMA, because they are not creative or knowledgeable enough to come up
with realistic, working models of reward that is specific to the unique
qualities of net.art. Instead, it is limiting it to the people who can
take the art school class on theory and grant writing. This is why the
Whitney, the Walker, SFMOMA are irrelevant; because they refuse to
create new models and instead apply working models to new media. You
cannot fight a tank with spears. If you doubt the assertion that net.art
is a tank, compare numbers; one38.org gets two thousand to four thousand
unique hits a day. What is the Whitney going to do for me? Give me
prestige? Fame? I'm already famous. Every net.artist is already famous!
We are famous with real people, not art students or professors. The
downside to this is that real people are cheap, real people don't make
donations. But if 3,000 people on average are visiting one spot on the
web, shouldn't somebody in the ivory tower, who is supposedly interested
in the preservation of relevant art, agree that the work deserves to be
maintained? If 3,000 people a day were going to one street performance
there would be a revolution. I'll offer the example of snarg.net again;
I was linked from their index one day; something like 15,000 unique
visitors. One day! And they are getting _nothing_ for it, and it is
better work, more interesting work, than any that you will end up
commissioning. I can guarantee it.

Net.Art does not need any interest from a museum to publish and promote
it! What it needs, solely, is recognition. Net artists are working for
free. Any organization that can change this will forever change net.art
for the better by preserving the current environment, and may even be
the one thing necessary to keep it alive and cultivate a diverse,
relevant body of work. If museums come in and say, "Okay, you made that,
we'll pay you to make this for us," then what they are commissioning is
web design. I don't want to make art about Rhizomes infrastructure! Hire
a graphic designer. If you want to promote real net.art, this is a poor
avenue.

Curt Cloninger (curt@lab404.com) wrote:

Your point is well made – net art is occuring outside of the old
structures. So are you wanting recognition from the old structures, or
money from the old structures? Why?

It seems like you're saying on the one hand – "galleries are lame and
clueless and we don't need them;" and on the other hand – "why don't
galleries get hip to us? We need them."

If the rhizome grant doesn't synch up with your particular artistic
M.O., that's cool. Don't apply for it. But need they retract it? It
didn't exist at all before. Now it's just one more grant thing that
exists. Maybe it will be of advantage to somebody who's already working
on a project that synchs with it, and it will aid them in making cool
stuff. Or maybe it will go to some totally lame axle-greasing fop, as
you predict.

Either way, why not wait and see how it plays out before dissing it?
Maybe rhizome is different. Or is the nature of grant-giving so
inherently corrupting that it's doomed to produce crap from the start?
Or is the nature of grant-giving so inherently opposed to all foms of
quality net art that it's doomed to produce crap from the start? Or is
the nature of whitney/walker curation so wack that it's doomed to
produce crap from the start? A, B, C, and D? None of the above? What
is the capital of Assyria?

Eryk Salvaggio (eryk@maine.rr.com) wrote:

What I am wanting is Rhizome, not the museums, but Rhizome, to consider
enabling its resources to actually adapt to what net.art is, instead of
join the museums who are wanting to pay artists to make net.art into
what they think it should be. Rhizome was in a place to decide whether
or not it would create new avenues and opportunities for actual artists;
it decided instead to dole out cash to fit an agenda that they have
constructed. This is in direct opposition to the basic principles of a
Rhizome, for one. If you impose this kind of order on a rhizomatic
structure it becomes a matrix.

Galleries are lame and clue less, and we want their money. They also
need to get hip. It seems like it should be a beautiful synthesis, yes?
So why isn't it happening? Why are they sticking so tightly to their
old, boring guns? I wonder why a phenomenon like the fucking INTERNET is
actually going unnoticed by museums? Why is it that instead of looking
at what is actually happening on the net and seeing how to foster
creativity and excitement; they look at it and wonder how they can turn
it into something they can own; trade, pay for.

The model it is based on is boring, out of date, redundant, useless, and
a waste of money. Dietz and the Whitney already have plenty of money to
give away and they haven't done anything interesting with it since they
started. This idea carries nothing new or exciting with it; it is simply
an extension of the museums money with "rhizome" written on the box.

For one, this isn't Rhizome. The Jury consists of art world fat cats who
have, in my opinion, lost their claim to being cool by virtue of their
inactivity and passive disregard for interesting work. I don't think
anyone on the panel [outside of Mark and Alex] believes their mission on
Earth involves internet art, that's why it is stupid that they have any
say whatsoever in the process. For two, can you show me any interesting
work that was produced because someone received a grant? It seems
impossible, since everything interesting arises out of necessity. It
can't wait for a review board to look over it, advise changes, and
dangle carrots.

Judson (office@plasmastudii.org) replied:

Then it seems like you are making the distinction that if you get paid,
it's graphic web design. But if you don't it's art. I don't think you
mean that though.

Also seems kind of silly you keep bringing up the number of viewers who
come for free. Gee, I'm sure given a helicopter, Marc would gladly drop
4000 drawings, poems, etc. on the city of London. Getting a random, un-
paying audience was never a problem. Direct marketing. But tickets are
a challenge to sell. Ideally, the barrage of poems gets public interest
and these people all go to the furtherfeelmeup gallery (which
incidentally charges admission and renting the helicopter for an hour
has GOT to be cheaper than this equipment)

But you are right that the old jury system, etc is completely in-
conducive to net.art. I must hear from 500 galleries/museums a year,
that are unable to accommodate anything but slides. For the display,
it's easy enough to rent an iMac or something but they don't have a way
for all the judges to add your application sample to the pile.

The old judging methods just don't work. By net.art standards they're
out-dated and the judges are often pretty clueless in front of a
monitor. Who's to blame them. Not their job. Or at least it wasn't.
But you have to keep in mind that net.art is really all about expendable
cash. This equipment ain't free. Most places can't afford a $5000
projector and $1500 machine to replace that $30 slide projector they got
in '73. Budget-wise, this would mean the gallery scene would have to
make a big move.

Which isn't so ridiculous. The restaurant biz did it. 20 years ago
cash registers and paper/notebook menus were fine. Now, even the
littlest places have flat panel touch screen stations. It's a new
expense to stay in business. Sink or swim. Keep up or belly up. Scrap
the old budget/biz plan and start fresh. And while your at it scrap
trying to get all the judges on the panel looking at the same thing at
the exact same time.

But Rhizome. It's not exactly the old-style gallery but started long
enough ago that it still has lots of old-school habits. Ok, archiving,
preservation used to be important and are no longer at all significant.
(Particularly since a zip disc goes for $10.) Ownership of ideas,
proprietary "my idea, I got there first, I own it" is pointless on the
web too but it's a throw back to the old gallery/museum system. That
one hasn't been eradicated either. So what is? There's a million URLs
to look at, they choose 3 for you.

But it could just be that the net makes a lousy "location" for art.
Find an application or a physical way to get it in the real world. Or
have it refer people to a real place. It seems ridiculous to rustle up
4000 visitors and never ultimately any income. What's it worth to these
people? More than the price of your machine, monthly IP service/custom
domain and time? Art is already absurdly slanted to the wealthy. The
poor can't afford to live off what so many net.artists do on spec.

Eryk Salvaggio (eryk@maine.rr.com) wrote:

I'm entirely aware of the subjective nature of art and it's crap-
assessment…I am sure someone somewhere thought that Alexei and
Natalies cop-out website was insightful and interesting, I didn't. But
that's just me. My critique is not on the work it picks, more like one
universal facet of the work it picks, which is that the work is not
realized until they pick it. I think this is a bad way to do things.

Do we all agree that these qualities are vital to net.art: Democratic
Access, Spontaneous and Immediate Publication, and Constant Evolution
[ie; an artist may always change the work?] I think if we do, then we
need museums structures to recognize these elements; otherwise, whatever
they purchase is not net.art; but one of its bastardized cousins.
["webart", "internet based installation art."]

Terrence Kosick (kosick@sprint.ca) wrote:

I think a web art org like Rizome needs to make it clearly understood
what it's intentions are and owes it to all subscribers at all levels
"The Community" just what they mean to the hosts and why they alow for
such venues to exist what this allowance is trying to achive and what
their considerations are for these lists are. I think there are some
growing conflicts here and perhaps some people need to make some tough
choices. What and who is better at reciprocating the free living
breathing aspect of web art?

Has the original paradigm of rizomatic flowered? Or is it just withered
fruit on the vine? I think there was always an intention to mirror old
systems and a submissive group of structure bred creators that brought
this pathogenesis that cultures potted plants for sale in dreary monitor
lit corners of museums. Physical or virtual. I can't separate some
things from the heavily promoted stuff that doesn't have a foot in some
shallow grave.

Myron Turner (turnermm@home.com) wrote:

First, I agree with Eryk, that we should expect more than the usual
grant-type exercise from Rhizome and one, in addition, with such a
narrow focus as the Rhizome interface. It's different when net groups
that function like artist run centers set localized or limited topics.
But Rhizome should take a wider view. There's nothing wrong with
wanting a new interface, but that shouldn't be the subject of a major
new Rhizome opportunity for artists. Even the "tactical response"
topic is limiting, forcing people to deal with a specific issue, when
they may want to get on with other and apolitical concerns.

I also think Eryk has a point when he complains in his replies to Alex
that "it is limiting it to the people who can take the art school class
on theory and grant writing." And not because having to write 500 words
is in itself a big deal—Eryk must have already posted at least 1500 on
this controversy—but because the process of application is such a
rigmarole that taken together with the 500 words, it will be enough to
put man people off.

But what he's asking to be substituted is not a "grant" but a prize–
money awarded after the fact—when the project is already done. Maybe
this is something Rhizome should ask itself—does it want a yearly
award for which it sets topics on which artists have to submit essays,
c.v.'s, past work etc. Or does it just want to reward excellence?
Artbase already does something like this, only on a broader scale. Why
not award projects from out of each year's additions to Artbase?

The excellence part is, of course, the stickler. One of the things Eryk
is complaining about is that curators at the Walker, Whitney, etc have
promoted only crap. But obviously what's crap to him isn't crap to
someone else—for instance to Alex and Mark Tribe, who selected these
curators to be on the jury. ((Unless we are attributing totally cynical
and self-serving motives to them.)) Time and again someone will
recommend a site to this list and I'll go to it only to find that it's
just another piece of Flash Art buzzing across the screen. The most
egregious recent example was when Milos Manetas told us that he'd found
the greatest piece of web art since Pacman–which is of course all that
it was, translated to Flash, totally without any significance but the
endlessly repetitive adolescent violence of its stick figures. With
Flash everybody's an artist, the messenger becomes the message, the
spade that digs the hole mistaken for the tree. (This was a discussion
which we had several times on this list, pre-flash.)

As to the jury, it concerns me as well that it is so heavily weighted to
the museum culture, since the internet should develop its own
independent, internet-based institutions, which is what makes
organizations like Rhizome so important. But what bothers me as much as
seeing the Walker and the Whitney on a Rhizome jury is that Rhizome put
itself on the jury– a jury should be independent of the sponsoring
organization. (But this, I assume, is just growing pains—being always
difficult to let go.)

Marc Garrett (info@furtherfield.org) replied:

We've done loads of online/offline/street/gallery shows & have
publicized them on here dido/zoetrope/pasteups, loads but yet to be out
pulled out of the raw zone bucket - its about networking and who you
know. Institutional connections help dramatically, for that is where the
cash is shared, plus kudos. But that can only go so far - after a while
you see the same people being promoted yet again and the art world gets
stale - it is stale.

Furtherfield was formed because of this sort of problem - and we have
been promoting artists for their own contexts, their own intentions,
thier own independence. Style is not the issue here, it is pure
politics.

I believe that there is more to art than just making it - one also has
to question one's own intentions of why they are creating it & think
about what they are doing with it. Part of that process is viewing the
function & structures of institutional control over creativity - what is
aloud to be seen & what is not. Just like in the media 75% of the seen
art in the press is publicity from agents promoting the art work -
propoganda is all part othe process of marketing an artist/group/org, we
all should know this by now.

Of course, those less likely to challenge the structure are those who
are already being supported and promoted.

For instance to get into the Tate - Turner Prize you need to belong to
one of the big galleries/institutions..The Lisson gallery/White Cube etc -
who do not even bother looking for talent outside their own inner circle-
jerk environment, they choose processed artists under the 'who do we
know within our remit scheme'. Not an original way of selection. A
modernist criteria, we have moved on from this haven't we? No!

This kind of 'deselection' non-initiative creates a divide and rule
situation that denies talent by default. Too many individuals/groups do
not get even a nibble - I am so tired of seeing work that is similar to
mine, long after I created it getting seen by a wider audience, just
because I have not talked to the right people. Don't get me wrong, I've
been getting on fine & getting exhibitions etc, but it is soul
destroying seeing some bimbo asshole being promoted as thou he/she is
the bees kness, and they are crap. I've making art outside the college
system since i was 16 years of age. I am 37 now & still doing it. It is
time for art organisations to look outside of their backyard and see
beyond their own limited vista. This can only work to enhance
creativity, not stunt it.

Even though I believe Rhizome does offer alternative avenues for up &
coming adventurous geniuses, there will be people who will slip through
the net (not internet) due to the fact that they are different in the
way that they create, and their politics might not fit into the
framework exactly. It is time for people to take the issue by the horns
and kill this beast of negativity that leaves the rest of the world
culturally/imaginatively hungry - let them see who are really out there.
For all we are getting is a pastiche so far…