RHIZOME DIGEST: 8.30.02

discussion

Posted Aug. 29 2002 20:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 8.30.02

RHIZOME DIGEST: August 30, 2002 Content: +editor's note+ 1. rachel greene: this week +announcement+ 2. jaka zeleznikar: Pixxelpoint (info/call) International Computer Art Festival, edition 2002 3. nikola tosic: njumedija 0_ +work+ 4. Jim Andrews: Karl Young +comment+ 5. Coco Fusco: A Modest Proposal for Josephine Bosma +thread+ 6. Eric Miller (eric@squishymedia.com), "app][lick.ation][end.age", David Garcia, Joseph Nechvatal: Documenta XI:no laughing matter / A letter to Josephine Bosma (on Documenta XI) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 8.30.02 From: rachel greene (rachel@rhizome.org) Subject: Editor's note Discussion about Documenta 11 evolved on Rhizome and Nettime this week, switching at times to reflect back on 'net.culture' on account of Coco Fusco's parodic response to Josephine Bosma's review of the festival (Bosma's text is archived at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?7036">http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?7036</a>). Fusco, for those who don't know her extensive work as a critic, curator or artist, brings advanced knowledge to the table, and I for one am glad she and Martha Rosler have been active on these lists. Well established as critical artists and writers, they have much to contribute to a younger, though different, scene. Responses to Fusco's text vary, with many people wanting her to be more specific about her critiques… In other news, Rhizome is looking to expand its stable of core writers, who cover events regionally or contribute to Rhizome email lists, to include other voices. Writers should have familiarity with contemporary art, analytic capabilties, and should be net savvy. One must be reliable, observing agreed upon deadlines and parameters (e.g. for word count and tone). Please send an email to rachel@rhizome.org if you're interested, briefly introducing yourself and your interests. Attach writing samples if they exist. We pay. Thanks, rachel + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 8.28.02 From: jaka zeleznikar (jaka@jaka.org) Subject: Pixxelpoint (info/call) International Computer Art Festival, edition 2002 Pixxelpoint is festival that gathers artists, students and enthusiasts of computer art. It is based on showing illustrations, fine and pop art made with computers. It will take place in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, from Nov. 22 to Nov. 29 2002. Pixxelpoint is a two way communication exhibition: it gives artists from all around the world the opportunity to show their work and lets people see what's happening in the world of computer art. Images are put from screen onto the walls of the gallery, and animations are shown via video projector. For the music section there's a separate room where the compositions will be played. The festival itself is accompanied with concerts and lectures. Joining the festival is free of charge. There are no age, nationality and thematic limitations. You may join categories: - static images (2D, 3D & vector) - computer animations - interactive art - music Read rules and regulations can be found on the festivlal page. Deadline for submitting works is September 15 2002 Awards will be given by public and by the jury. More info on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.pixxelpoint.org">http://www.pixxelpoint.org</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ **MUTE MAGAZINE NO. 24 OUT NOW** 'Knocking Holes in Fortress Europe', Florian Schneider on no-border activism in the EU; Brian Holmes on resistance to networked individualism; Alvaro de los Angeles on e-Valencia.org and Andrew Goffey on the politics of immunology. More @ <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.metamute.com/">http://www.metamute.com/</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 8.29.02 From: nikola tosic (nikola@tosic.com) Subject: njumedija 0_ njumedija 0_ <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.njumedija.org/0">http://www.njumedija.org/0</a> american, english njumedija 0_ is a new media event which will be organized on the 29th September, 2002, in rex, jevrejska 16, belgrade. njumedija 0_ is the first in series of events whose goal is to promote new media and redefine standards of local public and authors. The event is appealing to all who are interested in design, art, electronic music, digital video, video games and other aspects of new media. The event will be moderated by vuk cosic, and it will consist of presentations by: vuk cosic_ net.artist, ljubljana & belgrade, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk">http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk</a> tom roope_ new media designer, london, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.tomato.co.uk">http://www.tomato.co.uk</a> gordan paunovic_ DJ and B92.net editor, belgrade, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.b92.net">http://www.b92.net</a> daniel jenett_ new media designer, hamburg, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.jenett.com">http://www.jenett.com</a> corrosion_ multidisciplinary group of young authors, belgrade, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.crsn.com">http://www.crsn.com</a> gebhard sengmuller_ inventor of vinyl video, vienna, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.vinylvideo.com">http://www.vinylvideo.com</a> time 11:00 AM 29th September, 2002 program 10:55 introduction 11:00 presentations 17:30 discussion 21:30 party ( location yet to be chosen ) location rex jevrejska 16 belgrade srbija <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.cyberrex.org">http://www.cyberrex.org</a> supported by pro helvetia, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.pro-helvetia.org.mk">http://www.pro-helvetia.org.mk</a> B92, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.b92.net">http://www.b92.net</a> active design, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.activez.net">http://www.activez.net</a> stamparija west, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.stamparijawest.com">http://www.stamparijawest.com</a> contact direct practical questions to <a rel="nofollow" href="mailto:nikola@njumedija.org">mailto:nikola@njumedija.org</a> direct theory questions to <a rel="nofollow" href="mailto:svetlana@njumedija.org">mailto:svetlana@njumedija.org</a> mailing list please visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.njumedija.org/0">http://www.njumedija.org/0</a> and add your email to our mailing list so you can be updated about news and possible changes organisers ngo njumedija_ ( dejan curcic, gordan paunovic, katarina zivanovic, marko simic, nikola tosic, nenad arsic, slobodan markovic, svetlana jovicic, zana poliakov, zoran pantelic ) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ Limited-time offer! Subscribe to Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA), the leading electronic newsletter in its field, for $35 for 2002 and receive as a bonus free electronic access to the on-line versions of Leonardo and the Leonardo Music Journal. Subscribe now at: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/INFORMATION/subscribe.html">http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/INFORMATION/subscribe.html</a>. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 8.29.02 From: Jim Andrews Subject: Karl Young Many will be familiar with Karl Young's work on the Light & Dust anthology at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lighthom.htm">http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lighthom.htm</a> , which is very different from ubu.com but similar in that much of the work is archival of pre-web avant garde visual poetry. Karl's anthology is less full of big names than the www.ubu.com archive, but it also has a deeper life in the art of the 60's-90's, with particular focus on North American work, but certainly no shortage of work from around the world, and the best coverage on the Web concerning, say, the Lettristes, among other relatively little-known but scintillating phenomena. I see he has put together an extensive site on his own work now at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/young/young.htm">http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/young/young.htm</a> . This is fascinating work in its range and commentary. ja + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. From: coco fusco (Animas999@aol.com) Date: 8.25.02 Subject: A Modest Proposal for Josephine Bosma A Modest Proposal for Josephine Bosma (jesis@xs4all.nl) final review net.art/culture Net.Art: a laughing matter? It is as if nature decided to complete the experience that the promoters of the internet have created for us. Video game parlors, cybercafes, advertisements for telecommunications and pseudoerotic displays of youthful flesh dominate the landscape of nearly every city in the developed world, and the wealthy quarters of most third world urban centers. Streets are flooded with neon and electronic billboards that provide much more light than what should be available at night. One of the world's most hyped art milieu can be described in one word: depressing. The most positive thing to say about net.culture probably is its openness to artists who have access to computers, and are largely white, male and western. Net.culture is depressing for three reasons (I am not even counting the curators' general ignorance of current art practices other than net.art, which constitute the overwhelming majority of art history past and present). First, the amount of frivolity and fatuous self-promotion and the absence contemplation of the world's current cultural and political situation other than generalized paranoia about surveillance and libertarian rants about wanting freedom from any kind of control, including rational judgement. The endless celebration of post-structuralist theories of deterritorialization and fluidity are truly over the top. There is an overkill of (somehow disguised) anti-statism and self-proclaimed avant garde status that makes one either grow irritated or totally disinterested after a while. Second, this is the art form of mostly R & D for the software industry and wireless communications, in which almost everything is meaningless on purpose. That net.cultural theorists need to preach and teach about what the avant garde supposedly "is" leads to a third more poignant reason for depression: Net.art is above all formalist and formally predictable. There is very little conceptual depth or anything else substantive, intellectually provocative or profound about it. That is, if one does not count the rather kitschy dramatic effect of the curatorial lingo hyping most new media shows that rivals the advertising copy of Silicon Valley. Individual artists and art works seem to be drowning in it, something they actually deserve. Main Impression Of course it is a relief to see a major art form that reflects the way the world is closing down. It sounds clichZ?d, but communication technologies and mass media culture are part of the economic and social polarization of the world that reached traumatic proportions in the 1990s. Cultures that were colonized politically by Europe from the 15th to the 20th century have slowly started to undergo new forms of colonization called neoliberalism. As a result, older forms of hybridization and intercultural exchange are being supplanted by the McDonalidization of most urban cultures. Bad taste is now defined by American companies, but is bombarded into other countries via massive propaganda campaigns that make lousy food, technologically mediated interaction, and obsessive consumerism seem desirable. Multinationals and most governments do everything possible to censor information about their faults. Most affluent people do everything possible to avoid unmediated contact that would expose their faults as well. One of the things that net.culture seems to want to be is what its name implies: to be THE culture of the moment - that represents the radical transformation of the world by digital technology, or a confirmation even, maybe. But it does so in a highly predictable, lecturing way. As I said, this is the art form of the internet, of radical 'art' (illustrated best, probably, by the words of most other art curators, who usually talk about it as "that awfully ugly stuff that never downloads anyway"). A barrage of spam from a self-centered semi delusional artiste, found footage with images of home made porn re-edited, a documentary about avatars , so called 'new forms of cinema' showcasing anti-globalization protests in Europe and North America, numerous websites announcing non-existent governments and countries and corporations for no apparent reason, endless webcam diaries about white suburban people who think their lives are interesting, and a number of works in which artists contemplate on their invented selves are mixed with grim looking pieces about biotechnology and designer babies, numerous "artful" porn sites with obscenities in various languages, pages covered with code and unreadable text, lousy computer animation, black and white streaming videos of empty or gloomy spaces and labyrinthine MUDS and MOOS with 12 signs of depression. The relatively large number of murky photos of outer space make the impression of net.art as literal documentation of our times even stronger. Net.culture is not just dominated by tepid works and frivolity and self-aggrandizement. What is rather puzzling within this net.culture is the odd presence of certain 'old favorites' in its aesthetic. One wanders from site to site filled with what I described above and then suddenly, slightly lost, there is a space filled with works that look strangely like repeats of structuralist film, 70s femininst autobiographical video, or neo-geo painting (even worse the second time around). Even if these genres have yielded very interesting works seeing them on line makes one wonder why people argue that net.art represents a total rupture with the past. Also interesting works by 'newer' artists or artist groups that have nothing to do with nettime/Next Five Minutes/Ars/ Transmediale circuit are rarely noticed by the players of the "scene". The political brainwash of the majority of the field is so strong that it overpowers all works and leaves one with very little room for serious ideological and political interpretation. The question then haunts you: what makes the work of few serious artists in net.culture ignored by most nettimers? One tries to think like the curators seem to have thought, so here we go: is it because they are somehow not easily packaged as cyberhype, because the work is about the inequities of net.culture and the world outside it (thus a sign of net.culture's decadence) or because this work offers critical perspectives on or contemplations of the fetishization of technology or simply because the artists who made them are not 'white' and make (again) contemplative, interesting pieces? Even if the works of the Electronic Disturbance Theatre and Walid Ra'ad (who is the Atlas Group, since the group doesn't exist as a group) fit in this net.art scene perfectly, I don't think they really benefit from it. New media Net.culture does not just suffer from its ideological molding. I can very well imagine that somebody who actually likes the position of the curators still would find some things lacking in net.art. Concerning media other than net.art the curators of new media are far less informed as any randomly chosen museum director, which means they aren't. Maybe a special night course for acquiring knowledge of the rest of art history would do the trick. The net.art curators are simply out of it when it comes to knowledge about art in any other media, and their projects would gain a lot in credibility if they learned more , since many issues tackled in net.art are represented so well and abundantly in the rest of the media of artmaking in most of the world. If one tries to think from the ideological position of the new media theorists and radicals again there are plenty of good people who should be part of their events but rarely are. Surfing from portal to portal and list to list there were numerous instances that I thought: "Wouldn't some intervention of refugees in all this discussion by white people with passports about refugees make this discussion a little more grounded? "Isn't it time to look at the absolutely horrendous labor conditions in assembly plants where poor women go blind putting together your computers as part of the reason why technology isn't liberating everyone?" "Wouldn't it help to deflate the pretense of all those who claim to have reinvented art practice if net.culture-ites actually engaged in discussion with art historians and practitioners who have expertise in previous waves of new media?" "Wouldn't some politicized artists of color question whether it is enough for nettimers to collect software designers from every corner of the planet and call that diversity? Finally Politics has always been part of the artistic endeavor of the West from the didactic dramas of classical antiquity to the centuries of religious propaganda financed and controlled by the Catholic Church, to the deployment of Abstract Expressionism by the CIA – Why do net.culture people forget this so easily? One reason could be that part of the neoformalist revival in art in the 90s was more trend then strategy. The art market simply needs new trends to survive and net.art was one of them. "New products - new art, new artists - are displayed, new trends are announced, new players are introduced and old relationships are reinforced." Looking at it from that perspective net.art just might have succeeded in pushing a few new artists to the foreground. Is it impossible then to have a good time in net.art spaces? Absolutely not. There are still plenty of good works to see. And, as an artist said to me, it always is inspiring to see bad art. Maybe it would be better to see net.culture as an art work itself, a project by the telecommunication industry, software giants, and European and American governments using arts funding to revive their post-industrial economies whose message will probably resonate for quite a while after this wave of net.art is over, no matter what the final interpretation of it will be. It seems fairly sure that in the short term the museums were inspired by it. Several opened net.art portals, and made miserly commissions to virtually unknown artists when they were shutting down most of the other possibilities for artists without big dealers (or collectors backing them) to exhibit anywhere. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. Date: 8.26.02 From: Eric Miller (eric@squishymedia.com), "app][lick.ation][end.age" (netwurker@hotkey.net.au), David Garcia (davidg@xs4all.nl), Joseph Nechvatal (joseph_nechvatal@hotmail.com) Subject: Documenta XI:no laughing matter / A letter to Josephine Bosma (on Documenta XI) + + + >From Eric Miller: Hi all, A few thoughts after reading [Fusco's post]: One, from a purely practical standpoint there's a huge challenge for the would-be net.artist…the technology is difficult and requires full-time devotion to learning applications, something that your average conceptual artist isn't going to have the luxury or perhaps the mindset to accomplish. Creating something that is visually interesting in Flash, and finding a new way to say it, almost always requires object-oriented programming skills, traditionally the domain of engineering types. And talented engineers with borderline Asperger's Syndrome personalities aren't exactly known for artistic innovation. Given that, one can usually eyeball a net.art project and drop it into one of two camps: artists with strong conceptual skills who are dabbling with technology and haven't truly grasped the medium, and developers who spend so much time in the literal binary world of coding that their art efforts can lack deeper meaning. The generalists in between who are capable of bridging the gap don't often produce compelling work on either front, which doesn't bode well for the individual artist trying to triangulate the required technical skillsets with the conceptual skills behind powerful art. Maybe that's why so many collectives are forming around the medium…you need a wider skillset in this medium than most individuals can provide. But secondly: maybe I'm missing something, but why _does_ art have to be political? Why can't it be based on abstract aesthetic beauty, or humor, or contemporary cultural contexts, or scatology, or whatever pleases the artist? I don't see why the context for meaning in art is required to be sober and politicized in order to earn the label of virtuous and worthy. The openness of the net.art community to judge works based on criteria other than politicization would seem to be an asset, not a failure. To deny the artistic validity of any work that's not soberly political is a pretty narrow criteria for assessing value. Wasn?t that an observation being made on the recent Documenta 11 thread? So to say that curators who lack a formal educational background in art history are unqualified, presumably because they wouldn't automatically contextualize all art in a rigid political conceptual framework, smacks of art establishment elitism. When critiquing a nascent art movement's ideological straitjacket, one might do well to shed one's own. And it's funny that deterritorialization should be portrayed as a conceptual weakness, when it really acts as a functional strength. Regardless of the virtues and failures of globalization, location really doesn?t matter as much to Net workers and artists as it does to those who work in more concrete spaces. Critiquing the net.art world's grasp of the statelessness of the medium is a bit backwards…they GET that a website is not bound to a physical location, nor are the creators of the work or the audience. It seems that the unfamiliarity of this statelessness sparks a certain degree of apprehension in more traditional art circles. Lastly, I think many net.artists might take offense at the proposition that their work is inherently shackled to corporate motivations. I know a lot of artists with cell phones, and I'd daresay that their work doesn't center around shilling for Motorola and Nokia. I'd think that we could give artists a little more credit for thinking critically. We're still learning how to use this medium, and we're still learning how to critique it. Forcing the critical dialogue into a conceptual framework that can't accept certain fundamentals about the medium is flawed. Especially if the aforementioned framework is calcified by dogma. + + + "It is as if nature decided to complete the experience that the promoters of the internet have created for us. Video game parlors, cybercafes, advertisements for telecommunications and pseudoerotic displays of youthful flesh dominate the landscape of nearly every city in the developed world, and the wealthy quarters of most third world urban centers. Streets are flooded with neon and electronic billboards that provide much more light than what should be available at night. One of the world's most hyped art milieu can be describe in one word: depressing. The most positive thing to say about net.culture probably is its openness to artists who have access to computers, and are largely white, male and western." [From Fusco's text] mez responded: ….its n.teresting 2 absorb how this tendency 2 polarize marks cocos premise….utilizing such div][der][isive reductionism [m.ploying a "most positive" benchmark] & weighted concentration [& corresponding regurgitation of an overtly patricentric power stratification approach - ie her assumed authority thru the negation/displacement of nuanced discourses indicates an adherence 2 a hierarchical loading that coco _seems_ 2 b actively rallying against] acts 2 diminish the potentialities of x.posure 4 those works that r surprisingly omitted in this t][ext][ract……wot, in cocos opinion, r these non-male, non-western wurks + practitioners who r only made more marginal + minimalized by their gaping absence in this monologically-oriented text? ..this type of naive iteration of overarching dialogic advocacy structures is surprising, & i'm n.terested 2 learn how coco cs her concentration on the depressive state of so-labelled homogenized end-game net.art as either offering to x.pose or hi-lite [or n.deed reconceptualise] those she views as x.cluded? -][mez][ [aka app][lick.ation][end.age] + + + regarding Fusco's comment that: Surfing from portal to portal and list to list there were numeral instances that I thought: "Wouldn't some intevention of refugees in all this discussion by white people with passports about refugees make this discussion a little more grounded? David Garcia posted: Hi coco, just for your future reference, at the Amsterdam tactical media lab (part of the development process for Next 5 Minutes) we are working closely with refugees and refugee support groups both (white and non-white). As we are also being visited by the Publix Theater/No Border Caravan there should be many useful moments for refugees and the local NGO's that support them to encounter activists who see themselves as fighting their behalf. I hope they (and you) might discover that being white and holding a passport does not necessarily guarantee bad faith. By the way we are particularly happy to welcome the Caravan to the Tactical media lab after hearing (according to Brian Holmse's posting of a week ago) that the No Border Caravan were chased away from Dokumenta, pretty rich from (as Brian put it) "a show which counts the contemporary capitalist border regime as one of its obsessive themes." + + + Joseph Nechvatal wrote: If the most positive thing Josephine Bosma can say in the current Rhizome Digest about Documenta is that it opens up exhibition/catalogue space to melancholic documentary artists ignorant or uninterested in digital realms who are neither white, male nor western - then it is true that this political brainwash/agenda/mix makes for better television than mega-exhibition. However, I want to hear from these documentary artists directly. Where is the Documenta internet chat room / bbs this time? I would like to know if for these artists this Documenta is more about techno fatigue or digital divides? Hence, yes, in that sense we are witnessing the art world equivalent of the bursting of the Internet dream. So where is the Internet reality? In this sense the show lacks a revisitation to that which has already "been done" before but one contrary to what Rainer found. Perhaps the lack of this technological communications/art is not a "relief" Rainer, but the contrary. Enwezor¹s Documenta then, at least for Josephine, is simultaneously "too much" and gravely lacking. Too much "political brainwash" coupled with a conspicuous techno lack of the likes of Electronic Disturbance Theatre, Heath Bunting, RTMark, Critical Art Ensemble, Old Boys Network (who do it better). Agreed. But an indemnification of this problem requires a balance between the "room for interpretation" (open work idea) of art and the documentary style aimed at truth. An elegant equilibrium is required here. Good political guidance HAS (rarely!) succeeded in fostering consequential art (while fostering some strongly significant music). I think art still can (rarely) do it, if the content is approached subtlety with a cleverness that is effective in its processes of seduction. In fact, it could be the seductiveness of this rarity which tempts so many well-meaning good people into making crappy political art a futile activity neither sufficiently political nor adequately artistic. But then, as Rainer points out, the evolution of form is not the whole of art history, either. There is content to consider. I say this having not seen Documenta XI but for its web presence. I exclusively am commenting about the ideas of ideological revival circulation around the show on the net. But, I admit, that hearing what I have heard on the net, I do not intend to make the petite voyage from Paris to Kassel to see the show this time. For I agree with Josephine that didactic political instruction is generally bad for art. This sounds like a show for silent passages. Joseph Nechvatal <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.nechvatal.net">http://www.nechvatal.net</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization. If you value this free publication, please consider making a contribution within your means at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/support">http://rhizome.org/support</a>. Checks and money orders may be sent to Rhizome.org, 115 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law and are gratefully acknowledged at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/10.php">http://rhizome.org/info/10.php</a>. Our financial statement is available upon request. Rhizome Digest is supported by grants from The Charles Engelhard Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome Digest is filtered by Rachel Greene (rachel@rhizome.org). ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 7, number 35. Article submissions to list@rhizome.org are encouraged. Submissions should relate to the theme of new media art and be less than 1500 words. For information on advertising in Rhizome Digest, please contact info@rhizome.org. To unsubscribe from this list, visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/subscribe">http://rhizome.org/subscribe</a>. 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