RHIZOME DIGEST: 7.03.05

discussion

Posted July 2 2005 20:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 7.03.05

RHIZOME DIGEST: July 3, 2005 Content: +note+ 1. Francis Hwang: Director of Technology's report, June 2005 +announcement+ 2. Kevin McGarry: FW: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] archive hour from Banff - curating and conserving new media +opportunity+ 3. Kevin McGarry: FW: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] Fwd: SMAL Project Co-ordinator - job opportunity 4. Marisa S. Olson: Fwd: ASCA Conference: Trajectories of Commitment and Complicity +interview+ 5. Jo-Anne Green: Let's Get Loud!: Cluster's Interview with Helen Thorington 6. zanni.org: Carlo Zanni Interview at Artificial.dk +commissioned for Rhizome.org+ 7. Marisa S. Olson: Interview with Nat Muller +thread+ 8. t.whid, Marisa S. Olson, Jim Andrews, Jason Van Anden, Lewis Lacook, Geert Dekkers, furtherfield, Pall Thayer, Rob Myers, partick lichty, Phillip Galanter, Dirk Vekemans, Eduardo Navas: NYT review of ArtBase 101 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome is now offering Organizational Subscriptions, group memberships that can be purchased at the institutional level. These subscriptions allow participants at institutions to access Rhizome's services without having to purchase individual memberships. For a discounted rate, students or faculty at universities or visitors to art centers can have access to Rhizome?s archives of art and text as well as guides and educational tools to make navigation of this content easy. Rhizome is also offering subsidized Organizational Subscriptions to qualifying institutions in poor or excluded communities. Please visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/org.php">http://rhizome.org/info/org.php</a> for more information or contact Kevin McGarry at Kevin@Rhizome.org or Lauren Cornell at LaurenCornell@Rhizome.org + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 7.01.05 From: Francis Hwang <francis@rhizome.org> Subject: Director of Technology's report, June 2005 Hi everyone, A pretty slow month for me, owing largely to the fact that I travelled a lot and was really only in NYC on Rhizome time for about half the month. Would it be ludicrous to say that I still need a vacation? Oh, so it goes. A few notes: 1. Raw spam Occasionally people try to use various parts of Rhizome, particularly the Raw mailing list, to spread spam. We don't really have an automated solution for it, but if you see anybody sending out stuff that is clearly off-topic and/or inappropriately commercial, let me know and I'll quietly kick them off. Please note that this does not apply to posters who are simply confrontational or even incoherent. Incoherence will always have a home at Rhizome. 2. Commissions came out, finally! After much delay, we announced the winners of the 2005-2006 Commissions cycle. Congrats to all, and keep in mind that we're planning a real-life Commission event in October, with human bodies and cocktails and everything. Go see the winners at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/commissions/">http://rhizome.org/commissions/</a> . 3. More RSS goodness There's now a Raw RSS feed, if you want to see everything come down the pike. Also, many of the previously existing feeds–artwork.rss, calendar.rss, exhibit.rss, opportunities.rss–have more complete entries in them so you can see more without coming to the site if that's your thang. Francis Hwang Director of Technology Rhizome.org phone: 212-219-1288x202 AIM: francisrhizome + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 6.27.05 From: Kevin McGarry <kevin@rhizome.org> Subject: FW: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] archive hour from Banff - curating and conserving new media Wow! —— Forwarded Message From: Sarah Cook <sarah.e.cook@SUNDERLAND.AC.UK> Reply-To: Sarah Cook <sarah.e.cook@SUNDERLAND.AC.UK> Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 17:23:22 +0100 To: NEW-MEDIA-CURATING@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Subject: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] archive hour from Banff - curating and conserving new media Please note the fantastic opportunity below! From the mountains of Canada, where real bears live, Archive Hour with the Dirty Librarian plays audio recordings of past Banff New Media Institute Summits from 1995 2005 on pirate radio station Radio90. Listen online live (oh, so easily) wherever you are at www.radio90.fm Beginning June 27 Archive Hour will be broadcasting the Curating and Conserving New Media Symposium which took place at the Banff New Media Institute from May 25 30 1998. Times: Monday to Thursday: 10 am 11:30 am MST (5pm BST) Please note; Archive Hour will not broadcast on June 30, and July 4 (as your Dirty Librarian will be attempting to reintegrate with society where there is no fear of death by bears). Selection of speakers to be broadcast includes: ? Barbara London Head of the museum of Modern Arts Film and video department ? Carl Goodman - Curator of Digital Media American Museum of the Moving Image ? Thecla Shiphorst - Artist ? Jean Gagon Foundation Daniel Langlois ? Dot Tuer - writer, art critic, and cultural historian ? Sara Diamond Director BNMI Topics discussed: ? Current Concepts in New Media Festivals: Salon vs. Concepts ? Conceptual Practices and New Media Curation and Exhibitions ? Current Curatorial Concepts in New Media ? Conserving Ephemeral Works: practice and rights ? Technology, Art and Science ? Collaboration: artist, engineer, scientist —— End of Forwarded Message + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome ArtBase Exhibitions <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/">http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/</a> Visit the fourth ArtBase Exhibition "City/Observer," curated by Yukie Kamiya of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and designed by T.Whid of MTAA. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/city/">http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/city/</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 6.28.05 From: Kevin McGarry <kevin@rhizome.org> Subject: FW: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] Fwd: SMAL Project Co-ordinator - job opportunity —— Forwarded Message From: Sarah Cook <sarah.e.cook@SUNDERLAND.AC.UK> Reply-To: Sarah Cook <sarah.e.cook@SUNDERLAND.AC.UK> Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 12:44:36 +0100 To: NEW-MEDIA-CURATING@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Subject: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] Fwd: SMAL Project Co-ordinator - job opportunity Begin forwarded message: > From: Luci Eyers <giraffe@easynet.co.uk> > Date: 28 June 2005 12:22:08 BST > To: smal@dodgeit.com > Subject: SMAL Project Co-ordinator - job opportunity > > (Sorry if you have already received this but we want to ensure that > everyone has seen this job opportunity) > > [SMAL] Season of Media Arts, London > > Project Co-ordinator > £35,000 pa. 2 days a week pro rata (£13,704) > contract: July 2005 - April 2006 (10 months) > > This post is to assist and support the organisational process of a > Season of Media Arts, London for March 2006. A good knowledge of > contemporary media arts, and the autonomous art networks operating in > London will be useful. A flexible approach is desirable because actual > hours worked will be variable depending on the time of project > intensity - this will average 2 days a week. > > SMAL is looking for applicants who have excellent organisational and > communications skills, who can work autonomously, delegate, and manage > time. An understanding of Arts administration and financial > administration will be necessary, with additional experience of fund > raising desirable. You will have experience in working with groups or > working on projects with multiple participants and need to be computer > literate and able to engage with and critique experimental software. > > Further information and a full job description can be found at > <a rel="nofollow" href="http://smal.omweb.org/modules/wakka/CoordinatorJobDescription">http://smal.omweb.org/modules/wakka/CoordinatorJobDescription</a> > > Application procedure: > Please submit a letter describing how you suit the job, and what > interests you about it. Please include a current CV, two references > and contact details. > > Closing date for applications: 1 July 2005 > Interviews will be held on 12th and 13th July (in central London > location) > > Contact: > coordinator@ > <a rel="nofollow" href="http://smal.omweb.org/">http://smal.omweb.org/</a> > > SMAL is committed to equal opportunities. —— End of Forwarded Message + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 6.29.05 From: Marisa S. Olson <marisaso@gmail.com> Subject: Fwd: ASCA Conference: Trajectories of Commitment and Complicity This is an interesting conference series. I reported, for Rhizome, on their last conference, Sonic Interventions. This call doesn't mention media art specifically, but I know that there's a strong interest in new media and network culture, there… > Trajectories of Commitment and Complicity > Knowledge, Politics, Cultural Production > > The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) > invites proposals for the international workshop, > Trajectories of Commitment and Complicity, to be > held between 29th - 31st of March, 2006 in > Amsterdam, the Netherlands. This interdisciplinary > workshop will be dedicated to exploring the concepts > of commitment and complicity as they manifest > themselves at the intersections of knowledge, > politics and cultural production. > > Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Prof. Timothy Brennon > and Prof. Elleke Boehmer > > The concepts of commitment and complicity come into > play when scholars engage with tensions between > knowledge, world politics and everyday life. For > example, if one asks how knowledge and methodologies > in the humanities can travel to make a difference in > everyday politics and vice versa. Although the two > concepts are widely used in colloquial language, > their intellectual trajectories have often been > under-illuminated. Either commitment seemed (a) good > in itself, or the so-called disinterestedness of > knowledge production foreclosed any kind of > assessment of the term. Equally, the uses of > complicity have kept the concept outside the realm > of examination. Either complicity was used to stress > the accommodating roles of knowledge, intellectuals > and cultural production in relation to dominant > power structures, or it was celebrated as an > enabling condition for research. > > Sparked by an interest in commitment as a form of > self-reflexive, engaged and responsible knowledge > production, while haunted by the hidden or explicit > complicity of the theories and concepts with which > we work, this workshop sets out to examine both > concepts within their situated trajectories. In > order not to turn blind - methodologically and > conceptually - at the very moment we use commitment > and complicity, both concepts need to remain subject > to critical examination. Thus, the question is not > whether one is a committed or a complicit scholar, > but how the twin concepts crystallize and manifest > themselves at the intersections of knowledge, > politics and cultural production, and how they > travel through space and time, institutions, and > methods of analysis. > > Uncomfortably and paradoxically, 'individuality', > 'freedom' and 'choice' are some of the constitutive > conditions of intellectual practices. However, the > position of the intellectual, the commitment and/or > complicity of the knowledge s/he produces and > her/his actions are not merely contingent upon these > conditions, particularly when other notions such as > autonomy, intellectual solidarity, critical thought > and answerability are taken into consideration. > Opening up a space for discussion for alternative > conceptualizations of intellectual practices while > keeping in mind that knowledge, politics and > cultural production are discourses of power, we wish > to develop an understanding that both works with and > against commitment and complicity. In doing so, we > intend to treat these twin concepts with the same > kind of generous scrutiny bestowed on other > traveling concepts in the humanities. > > * We encourage contributions surrounding, but by no > means limited to, the following questions: > > Spatio-temporal Trajectories: Definitions of > commitment and complicity are often dependent on the > historical, political and cultural frameworks within > which they are discussed. Due to this variation, the > 'object' of commitment and complicity as well as its > specific spatio-temporal cultural manifestations > should not be taken for granted. Yet, commitment and > complicity also seem to relate to universalisms such > as 'human rights' and 'freedom of thought'. How can > we think of commitment and complicity without > running the risk of turning them into either master > narratives or culturally relativist concepts? To > what extent are commitment and complicity culturally > specific concepts? How do specific forms of > commitment and complicity arise in particular > geographic, cultural and social locations, and how > can they possibly move to other contexts? Regarding > the genealogy of commitment and complicity, how, by > whom and to what aims have both concepts been used? > > Trajectories in Cultural Production: Cultural > artifacts as productions of knowledge are often > informed by practices of commitment and complicity, > and hence require to be analyzed in terms of them. > In what ways do cultural products articulate or > produce forms of commitment and complicity? How, and > through which strategies, do cultural artifacts > negotiate the ways in which they are committed or > complicitous? How are reading/viewing practices > informed by commitment and complicity? In what ways > do overtly 'committed' cultural artifacts become > expressions of complicity? Is there such a thing as > a 'committed' cultural artifact or is it more apt to > talk about committed or complicitous readings? How > can we understand processes of cultural production > and consumption in terms of commitment and > complicity? > > Trajectories of intellectual production: While > committed to socio-political causes, intellectuals > are also mediated by that which they seek to resist. > Through the concepts of commitment and complicity, > the nature of the relationship between the > intellectual, the knowledge s/he produces, and > everyday politics can be scrutinized. How can we > envision intellectuals to be committed and complicit > in terms of their political (institutional, > personal, cultural) situation? To what extent is > their institutional situation an enabling or > restrictive condition, and to what extent does that > situation politicize or depoliticize the very > material and ideas they work on? When do the > commitment and complicity of knowledge and its > production risk inserting one's scholarly production > into the dominant ideologies one sets out to > criticize? And to what extent could the concepts of > commitment and complicity contribute to an effective > methodology (e.g. self-reflexivity) for studying > these questions? > * Organizing Committee: Bregje van Eekelen, Begum > Ozden Firat, Sarah de Mul, Ihab Saloul, Sonja van > Wichelen > * Practicalities: The Amsterdam School for Cultural > Analysis (ASCA) is devoted to studying contemporary > culture through detailed, historically as well as > theoretically informed analyses of case studies. > Participants should specify how the concepts of > commitment and/or complicity are theoretically, > politically, and culturally relevant and related to > their own work. The concepts may be addressed > together or separately and preferably in correlation > with cultural objects such as film, artworks, > television, literature, photography, music, museums, > scientific objects/practices, religious > objects/practices, etc. This conference is the > latest in a series of ASCA graduate conferences and > is inspired by the Theory Seminar organized by Mieke > Bal in 2004-2005 on "Commitment in the Humanities." > *The workshop format of the conference is designed > to stimulate discussion in the panels. Instead of > "reading" their papers at the conference, > participants are encouraged to give a 15-minute > presentation of their work, connecting their paper > to the other papers in their panel and to the > overall concerns of the conference. Please send your > one-page proposal, accompanied by a short CV, by > October 15th 2005. Proposals will be selected > according to their relevance to the topics of the > conference. Participants will be asked to send the > final version of their papers (4000-word maximum) by > January 30th, 2006. A reader will be prepared for > each of the panels and will be circulated before the > workshop. Keynote speakers are to be announced. > * Please send your proposal to the ASCA office at > the following address: > Dr Eloe Kingma, Managing Director ASCA > Spuistraat 210. 1012 VT Amsterdam. The Netherlands. > Phone: +31 20 525 3874. > Fax: +3120 525 3052. > Email: asca-fgw@uva.nl <<a rel="nofollow" href="mailto:asca-fgw@uva.nl">mailto:asca-fgw@uva.nl</a>>. > Website: <<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.hum.uva.nl/asca">http://www.hum.uva.nl/asca</a>>. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org 2005-2006 Net Art Commissions The Rhizome Commissioning Program makes financial support available to artists for the creation of innovative new media art work via panel-awarded commissions. For the 2005-2006 Rhizome Commissions, eleven artists/groups were selected to create original works of net art. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/commissions/">http://rhizome.org/commissions/</a> The Rhizome Commissions Program is made possible by support from the Jerome Foundation in celebration of the Jerome Hill Centennial, the Greenwall Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Additional support has been provided by members of the Rhizome community. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 6.27.05 From: Jo-Anne Green <jo@turbulence.org> Subject: Let's Get Loud!: Cluster's Interview with Helen Thorington Let's Get Loud!: Cluster's Interview with Helen Thorington, Turbulence.org "They began with the radio, producing over 300 projects in 15 years. Then while it was still the dawn of a new genre, they started with net art. Today, TURBULENCE.ORG has around eighty net projects running, many of these making history in net art. With an enthusiasm and energy that's hard to compare, they continually enrich their collection in which one of the most important and most visited blogs of those dedicated to the relationship between creativity and new technology can be accessed. It doesn't have a physical space, but it doesn't need one, considering it can boast to be one of the most interesting places on the web. We asked the artist and co-director of Turbulence.org, HELEN THORINGTON, the project's backbone right from the start, to tell us the story, enlighten us on the structure and the problems it has had to face and to take a glimpse at what the future has in store." From "Let's get loud!: Interview with Helen Thorington" by Domenico Quaranta, Cluster #5. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://turbulence.org/interviews/CLUSTER_turbulence.pdf">http://turbulence.org/interviews/CLUSTER_turbulence.pdf</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.progettocluster.com/uk_rivista.htm">http://www.progettocluster.com/uk_rivista.htm</a> – Untitled Document Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://new-radio.org">http://new-radio.org</a> New York: 917.548.7780 ? Boston: 617.522.3856 Turbulence: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://turbulence.org">http://turbulence.org</a> New American Radio: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://somewhere.org">http://somewhere.org</a> Networked_Performance Blog and Conference: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://turbulence.org/blog">http://turbulence.org/blog</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Support Rhizome: buy a hosting plan from BroadSpire <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/hosting/">http://rhizome.org/hosting/</a> Reliable, robust hosting plans from $65 per year. Purchasing hosting from BroadSpire contributes directly to Rhizome's fiscal well-being, so think about about the new Bundle pack, or any other plan, today! About BroadSpire BroadSpire is a mid-size commercial web hosting provider. After conducting a thorough review of the web hosting industry, we selected BroadSpire as our partner because they offer the right combination of affordable plans (prices start at $14.95 per month), dependable customer support, and a full range of services. We have been working with BroadSpire since June 2002, and have been very impressed with the quality of their service. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. Date: 6.30.05 From: zanni.org <cz@zanni.org> Subject: Carlo Zanni Interview at Artificial.dk INTERVIEW: I SIMPLY CALL IT ART One of the artists that has kept popping up over the last few years is Italian Carlo Zanni (b. 1975). He originally got us interested when he launched the Altarboy - a device where art collectors can control when their internet art pieces are online - and he has since been featured twice in our networks list with his eBay Landscape and Average Shoveler. Kristine Ploug talked to him. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.artificial.dk/articles/cz.htm">http://www.artificial.dk/articles/cz.htm</a> ——————————————————————— ——————————————————————— A recent article in The New York Times spoke pragmatically about the obstacles of owning video art. It tends to be noisy and might disturb your nice and quiet time, or interrupt your dinner parties. It also seems plain weird to some having a Bill Viola projection onto the wall between the kitchen and the bedroom. Therefore, some people keep it off a lot of the time, others install a contemplation room in the garage, and yet others buy their own museum. When it comes to owning internet art it is even more troublesome, especially the kind of internet art that needs to be online to exist. Italian artist Carlo Zanni has one possible solution. He created the Altarboy - a personal server that easily lets you decide when your purchased internet artwork is online. Read more in our brand new interview with Carlo Zanni. The summer is here, and while we wish all of our readers a great holiday, Artificial will stay put with new articles and updates from the world of computer based art. Stay tuned! ——————————————————————— from : NEWS FROM ARTIFICIAL.DK #9, Thursday, June 30, 2005 <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.artificial.dk">http://www.artificial.dk</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 7. Date: 6.28.05 From: Marisa S. Olson <marisaso@gmail.com> Subject: Interview with Nat Muller Interview with Nat Muller, by Marisa S. Olson Nat Muller is a Venezuela-born Dutch curator and writer living inRotterdam and working internationally. She went to High SchoolinBelgium before earning a BA in English Lit from Tel-AvivUniversityand an MA in Lit at Sussex, in the Sexual Dissidence andCultural Change program. She continues to work on a global scale,organizing exhibitions, performances, talks, and publications on arange ofthemes related to media activism and electronic art. She'sworked quite a bit with V2, where she was formerly project manager andcurator. Amongst others she co-curated the Dutch Electronic ArtFestival (DEAF) in 2004, and has participated and organized programsfor Transmediale 2005, ISEA 2002, and many other major festivals. Nathas also collaborated on projects in Eastern Europe, such as"TheTrans_European Picnic: The Art and Media of Accession", and otherfestivals across Europe. All of this made for a very interestingconversation. I flew from New York to Amsterdam and took a train straight toRotterdam, where I was to spend the evening at Nat's in a sort ofblind date interview scenario. I woke up from a jetlagger's nap tofind that she'd cooked me an amazing meal and after several glasses ofwine we started recording our conversation about her work and aboutnew media, in general. We discussed the relationship of food tocurating, the status of cyberfeminism, the status of Holland and ofindependent curators in Europe, the hidden dangers of databaseaesthetics, the unusually vibrant sound art scene in Jerusalem, andthe challenges of curating and collaborating in the Middle East? MO: Your bio says that you are a freelance writer, curator,producer/organizer, critic, and a foodie/delight-maker. That's manyhats to be wearing, but I'm especially curious about thedelight-making role. Food seems to be a running theme in your work,from the collaboration with FOAM to the Open Brunch you organized atDEAF, to the Trans-European picnic, and other projects you'vedeveloped. Why is food so important to you? NM: I started cooking really late, at the age of 25. Before thatIwould refuse to cook out of hardcore feminist conviction. I grew upin a very multi-cultural household with parents of Jewish/MiddleEastern and Dutch/Asian origin. It was a very rich environment wherefood always set the scene for a particular social context. I guess Iam most interested in the set of codes and protocols coming with thepreparation and consumption of food: it is so much based oncommunication. When I organize an event I always try to get thepeople involved to share a meal together beforehand, because it doesshed certain facades or inhibitions when people break bread together.To me the best social interface is still the dinner table. People canshow themselves a bit more at the dinner table and that's fundamentalin collaborations. It's also the pleasure principle: food is verysynaesthetic. It's similar to working with alternative interfaces,wearable media or mixed reality environments where you are tryingtoget people to use and extend their sensual faculties andperceptions. MO: So is food preparation, for you, a metaphor for curating or somekind of cultural production? NM: Well, I guess you could put it that way: you're working withbringing raw ingredients together and working towards "a dish" that isbalanced, and "works" from the perspective of tastes, textures,colours, fragrances. If one ingredient or flavour sticks out toomuch, then it dominates the dish. This is not quite the idea?.not infood, nor in project coordination. For me cooking is very muchmethodological, and is somehow based on a principle of synthesis:where the combination of various elements engender something new?. andof course allow for a pleasurable consumption. It is particularly theissue of pleasure that I would like to see brought back morestrategically within artistic practice, without making it populist orlight. The food thing is similar to my interest in sexuality. It'ssensual and tactile. Next to tactical media, we definitely needtactile and tangible media. MO: It also seems like a good way to stay grounded in the midst ofyour busy life. You travel so much and work with artists from so manybackgrounds, and you have written and organized events around a numberof themes. Is there one overarching idea that thematizes yourcurating? NM: Well, I don't come from an arts background. For me thesocio-political context is always the most important. To me art offersa lens through which to view socio-political conditions. I'm notinterested in aesthetics for aesthetics' sake. MO: What about the issue of feminism? A minute ago you handed me areader called CTRL-SHIFT-ART/ CTRL-SHIFT-GENDER (published by Axis in2000) and you said "this is something I did when I was still acyberfeminist." Why are you not, anymore and what do you think aboutthe status of contemporary cyberfeminism? NM: It's dead!!! And the question is, also, was there ever such athing to begin with? What I found really attractive, in the mid-90s,with groups like VNS Matrix, is that they had this really sexy kind offeminism. It was certainly different from that second wave separatistBirkenstock/we-hate-men kind of thing or that third wave, intellectualCixous or Irigaray kind of feminism?of which mind you - I was a bigfan of in college, but it always remained somehow too abstracted, toointellectual, too detached, too beautiful. Then came all these sexywomen with big technology and this in-your-face attitude, and it wasactually cyberfeminism in 1996/1997 that got me into new media. It wasexciting; the first Cyberfeminist Internationals in Kassel in 1997,two years later in Rotterdam. There was this refreshing spirit andall these women were saying "we're going to show them that technologyis not just toys for the boys." It was a feeling of empowerment. Butby the end of the 90s it was really repetitive and self-perpetuatingand seemed to end up in the pitfalls that all feminisms have ended upin. It lost all its energy & momentum. And you can't blame it?maybethat's just inherent to feminism?but that's a whole can of worms toopen. MO: or any ism? NM: Yes, it just ends up institutionalizing that which it seeks tocritique. It became branded. I still think it's important work, and Iappreciate it a lot, but it became really repetitive. On a sociallevel it was always nice to see all the girls, but it lost itsactivist or emancipatory goal, its urgency. You cannot keeporganizing events with the same people again and again, and expect tomake a change. You create your own niche then: that's a bad thing.Flusser wrote that "Habit is like a cotton blanket. It covers up allthe sharp edges, and it dampens all noise." There lies the dangerofany ism. MO: Do you feel like any new thing has taken its place, whether it'sanother form of critique or a social movement? Or is there somethingyou want to see or to try to make happen for yourself? NM: I think it's probably a whole "salad" of things. If you think ofthe philosophy of tactical media or situated practices, for example, Ithink that's something that's been extremely important. It's thissensibility that I am trying to integrate in my latest researchproject, called "Xeno-Tech". Namely, looking at groups we've definedas "other" and ask what happens when "they" start using thetechnologies we've claimed as our own?the very things that make usstand apart and function as identitarian markers. I'm interested howmedia and technology have very discriminating scripts written intothem, how by default technological affordances always "other". I don'tthink there is enough attention paid to these things. AttheTransmediale this year, I gave the example of Macromedia's Flash,which doesn't accommodate right-to-left languages, which means that alarge chunk of the world population has been technologicallydiscriminated. MO: I'm curious, also, about how you understand your role. You arepart of this generation that plays so many roles at once and you arenot "just" a curator, but also a writer, a producer, an organizer? I'mcurious whether you see curation as a practice of tactical media orwhether you see yourself as facilitating some type of protest? NM: I'm not the kind of person who goes to all the protests, andstands on the barricades. My kind of critical work has always comemore through the pen than through the sword. So I do think there's apolitical role for 'the curator" when creating some kind of platformor context for debate and critique. "Curator," has for many artists,become a dirty word. I can't blame them! If you go to Documenta or theVenice Biennale, where the curator is god and the artists are justfunctional, then this really pisses me off. There are also curatorswho claim that curating is an art. That's bullshit. I think a curatoris supposed to facilitate and administrate and navigate betweenarticulations, but not take on an omnipresent role. It's time to getpast the male-dominated, proprietary, peacock-style, feather-flashingmode of curating. MO: I'm curious about the context of curating in Rotterdam or inHolland, or even in Western Europe. It seems like here there is acadre of people interested in electronic art and there seems to be notonly a new generation of artists or curators but also of a new type ofexhibition and critical text which calls for something as much as itcatalogues something in culture. But then, when I think of who's onthe radar here, I see a lot of "peacocks," to use your term, andcertainly a lot of men. That's not to belittle any of the manyinteresting men over here, but do you think it's any different for youbeing here than in New York or London, or elsewhere? NM: I can't judge the US because I've never worked there, but it'sfunny when I travel because I always get a response of "Oh, you're agirl," which is curious to me. There are some very interesting womenworking in our field, but new media art is becoming more and moreinstitutionalized, and unfortunately enough mostly men seem to begiven those institutional jobs. I wonder, sometimes, why that is. Isit still the good old glass ceiling, or is there something else goingon? MO: You, yourself, have said to me that you don't want to work forinstitutions if you don't have to. I think it is a luxury of theEuropeans to be able to survive as freelance curators, while this ishardly found in the US. But does this desire for independence haveanything to do with your own kind of feminism or is it simply a workpractice? Other than being able to set your own hours, what makes youso averse to working at an institution? NM: It's the diversity. Working at an organization, you always have tofollow a certain policy?which quite often is related to a fundingpolicy as well. You have to fit an organization's profile andidentity. On the other hand, I like to do things when I feel there isa necessity for a project or for public attention towards an issue.This picking and choosing is something you can only do when you areyour own boss. This also keeps you sharp. I'm not a specialist orstuck in something. I think organizations need blood transfusionsevery few years to stay innovative and I don't want to be stuck in aniche. MO: Yes, well speaking as an independent curator from the US, I cansay that you are never your own boss there, anyway. You still have towork with the organization and very often larger institutions placethe media arts at the bottom of the totem pole. It's a difficulteconomic model? But it is interesting how Rotterdam and Amsterdam havebecome a sort of mecca for design and electronic art. Do you thinkthatmakes it any easier to be an artist or a freelance curator, here? NM: I always say that I want to leave Holland but I couldn't do whatI'm doing here in many other places. Holland is blessed with manygreat institutions and festivals for media arts, which have broughtmany great people over here. In addition, The Netherlands have playeda pioneering role in the flurry of net art and new media, which makesit very unique to work here. MO: I am curious about the Trans-European context. How does Hollandfit into that context, on a global art-world level? It seems to methat there is almost a healthy level of autonomy. But as someone witha big interest in global politics I wonder what your excitations orconcerns are about Holland vis a vis the very major shifts going on inthe European community, right now?EU membership issues being but oneof them. NM: For me it's difficult to talk about the locality of Rotterdambecause I live here but work internationally. Last year the peoplefrom the Serbian collective Kuda were at the NEURO (networking Europe)festival asking people "what's your view of Europe" and I said thatI'm very pessimistic. It's becoming a more and more fortified FortressEurope, where it's very clear who's included and excluded. Even thoseincluded are there on very conditional terms. On a cultural level,because of the pedantic tone of European funding policies, the effortsto "manage culture" are very hegemonic and unproductive for culturalexchange or any kind of collaboration. It's really bleak. I see somany similarities between this century's fin de millennium and lastcentury's fin de siecle, with the paranoid and hysterical interest indatabases and obsession with containment. To me that's the term thatmarks this decade: containment. Whether it's viruses or people atGuantanamo Bay or religion or net art. MO: I think within the contemporary media art community, there's avery strong compulsion towards that, particularly in the celebrationof database aesthetics?towards looking at how something can be"captured" and reorganized. People forget that that kind ofrecombinance, on a historical level, has been quite scandalous interms of what it's done to bodies and subjectivities and states. I'mhappy to see, in our community, a more recent move toward broaderhistoriographies of these movements. NM: I mean it's interesting if you look at archives and databases andthe "ideologies of metadata." Historically, this kind of flirtationwith categorization has wider ramifications and they really aren'tpretty. And people tend to forget that. They tend to see the coolstructures but forget where the underlying layers and ideologies camefrom. MO: The people who claim to have an interest in the historical rootsofthis "aesthetic," and admittedly I am one of them, seem to root it inmodernity and early mechanical engineering, but they forget that thesewere marked by a doctrine of progress which had a social agenda. I canlook at a project like Cory Arcangel's "Data Diaries" and love it, ona "database aesthetics" level, and I have no belief that Cory has anykind of hegemonic intentions, but I think that people who do want tohistoricize modernity and the aesthetics of containment andcategorization, or even distribution and diaspora, need to understandthe role that it played. NM: Yes, I can very much enjoy this kind of work, but it's the sametype of thing with this new social software trend. It's a big word forsomething that inherently is based on the dynamics of inclusion andexclusion. Calling something "archival practice" or some type ofgenre, beforehand, makes it rigid and doesn't allow for much porosity,which is very limiting to an art practice. MO: So what are the projects that you're working on right now? NM: For the first time in ten years, I'm trying to merge my "vibe"with the Middle East with my interest in media art and tactical media.Before they were like two poles of things I was interested in?havinglived there but having these other interests. Now I've been able to goto Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Sharjah and see what kind of work peopleare making, under what conditions. The socio-political conditions havealways been a basis for me to look at the materiality ofsomeone'swork. Sometimes it has nothing to do with access to atechnology, but rather the particular context calls for a differentmedia practice or a different aesthetics. I've been working quite abit with experimental sound artists from the Middle East. To give youan example, for some reason there is a very vibrant audio art scene inJerusalem. It's weird because Jerusalem is a very difficult, heavy andreligious city. It's like the conflict embodied. You walk in thestreets and you can feel impending violence and the paranoia. A verysuffocating place to be in. It is known that there's a brain drainoccurring there; artists, academics? many tend to leave as soon aspossible after graduation. But for some reason there's been a flurryof independent labels for electronic music and especially the tinyRoza pub has become a hub for the electronic audio fringe. Same goesfor Beirut. Though Israeli artists and Lebanese artists can of coursenever collaborate, unfortunately enough. MO: They can't even be on the same documentation of practices in separate areas? NM: No, they can't be perceived as having worked together. It reallyinfuriates me that people don't realize this. People always have goodintentions about collaboration, but it's very problematic. People inEurope think 'oh, let's get Israeli and Palestinian artists togetherand offer them a neutral ground to work on' but that is so naïve,because there is no such thing as neutral ground. If a Lebanese andIsraeli artist work together, the Lebanese artist will return home andgo to jail for having appeared together in public with an Israeli.Lebanese can have as many coffees and wines with an Israeli as theywant, as long as it's private, but as soon as it becomes a publicperformance, it becomes dangerous. MO: Yet another reason to use food as a means of coming together, ifthey can come together for a meal but not a catalogue? NM: Yes, because people here have no idea what the policies are aboutcollaborations of that kind. People get all excited talking aboutcollaboration and involving third parties, but they should really dotheir research first and this just doesn't happen. There is nomobility or freedom of movement, yet people seem so excited to talkabout how technology brings it about. Curators need to learn tonavigate between foreign policy and diplomacy just to work a bitoutside of the US or Western Europe. MO: Well so far you are doing very well with that, so good luck withyour upcoming projects. And thanks for dinner! NM: My pleasure. URL's: V2: www.v2.nl DEAF: www.deaf.nl Transmediale: www.transmediale.de Trans_European Picnic: www.transeuropicnic.org + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 8. Date: 6.28.05-7.02.05 From: "t.whid" <twhid@twhid.com>, "Marisa S. Olson" <marisaso@gmail.com>, Jim Andrews <jim@vispo.com>, Jason Van Anden <jason@smileproject.com>, Lewis LaCook <llacook@yahoo.com>, Geert Dekkers <geert@nznl.com>, furtherfield <info@furtherfield.org>, Pall Thayer <palli@pallit.lhi.is>, Rob Myers <robmyers@mac.com>, patrick lichty <voyd@voyd.com>, Philip Galanter <list@philipgalanter.com>, Dirk Vekemans <dv@vilt.net>, Eduardo Navas <eduardo@navasse.net> Subject: NYT review of ArtBase 101 t.whid posted <twhid@twhid.com>: hmmmmmmmmmm <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/arts/design/28rhiz.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/arts/design/28rhiz.html</a>? Please discuss… + + + "Marisa S. Olson" <marisaso@gmail.com> replied: Hi, all. I thought I'd chip-in, here, as one of those artists for whom Ms. Boxer didn't have time (maybe because I fell into that "just entertainment" category, though I wanted to fall into the works that "try to make you politically aware, or at least wary" niche)–or as someone interested in the evolution of [media] art criticism…. Let's start with the good… Boxer gives nice props to Rhizome and she seems to be calling someone charming, which is always flattering (?). She also seems to imply that these works are demanding of time and are worthy of the same–though she doesn't respond to that call… She acknowledges that it's a big challenge to curate a retrospective survey of something that (to some extent) is still happening and that it's hard to mount a physical show of "web work," which is (I'm sure) what we are all calling our work… This is an area in which Lauren and Rachel (and Kevin and the crew) really succeeded with the show. They also managed to show people the diverse ways in which artists are using the internet. It's not only that artists are using it in different thematic ways (ie according to their schema of e-commerce, online celebrity, etc.), but also in different formal ways. I love that someone who sees this show will realize that Paperrad's sculptural installation is net art because it uses a Google image search, or that the 01's photos are net art in the sense that they document a project realized on the internet. Yes, we are all short on time, but I think this is less a determinant in [making or viewing] the work than the fact that we are all unique creatures who use the internet in different ways, after the ten years surveyed in the show. But let me get at the review more directly because I take issue with the points made (or implied) as much as the manner in which they were made. I totally agreed with Palli's witty review of the review. That's exactly how it reads to me. Jason said he found Boxer's description of MTAA's 1YPV spot-on, but to me it missed the boat. Or, rather, it ignored the elephant in the room–despite the fact that it related directly to the theme she seemed to have picked for her missive. The "year" that MTAA suggests viewers devote to their performance video is not a normal year. It can be experienced in increments of real or artificial time. My computer could "watch" the video when I do not, whereas I can watch it without being credited with such watching (since I never login when I look at it). The piece puts an onus on the viewer to do all the "work," since it sews together clips of a shorter duration–ie we are supposed to watch them in the room for one year, but they are not in the room for that year. (Or are they, this is a more existential question.) Boxer acknowledges the former but not the latter point, which is exactly what defines the piece. In fact, 1YPV is not only time-based because of the year in its title or the fact that it requires extended, and possibly clocked, viewing, but because it is an *update* from a date/era in which time is measured, experienced, and faked differently. Similar points apply to Simon's "Every Icon," which underscores the mortality of the viewer, and perhaps even of art, by making us realize that we will never see every icon, but also that image-making (despite its historical, formal, or critical constitution as "simply" a process[es] of mimesis and recombinance, which E.I. also makes clear), is a job that's never complete, though intellectually it is possible at the point of near-infinity (or is it entropy?). Simon's piece is predicated on its status as an installation. Its end-date is in question, but it is always defined by its start-date, which changes in various iterations that are human-defined. This means that it's different when it starts at X-date at the Guggenheim, vs Y-date in Alex Galloway's office (actually, there it seems to be turned off), or at Z-date in the home of Jill Schmo art collector. What does this have to do with Boxer's review? Simon banked on the fact that she wouldn't have time for it. That, like the time-faking in MTAA's peice, is worth mentioning. Now I don't want to personally attack Sarah Boxer (though she is very much worth taking the time to Google!), but I know that she has a background in psychoanalytic theory and I find it unfortunate that her reading in a science of interpretation has not parlayed into interpretations of art. As is true of her other articles recently discussed here, I think that this was, ultimately, a missive rather than a review. (Again, Palli said it all.) She doesn't adequately discuss the experience of the pieces, though the intended experiences were, in many senses, constitutive of the works. She says, simply, that she doesn't have time for them. (I wonder what her editor thinks of this, especially as she's writing for an art section and not a lifestyle section–the two are still separate, right?–but anyway…..) So here is my theory, or what I feel is happening… (And Boxer's writings are simply a good example of this problem, but not the only example.) I think that we are seeing a contemporary redux of what used to be called "criticism by beauty." This mode of "critique" was popularized in the era of French New Wave filmmaking. In short, it was characterized by reviews in which the writers seemed to have said to themselves, "If I don't understand it, it must be brilliant." This led to a lack of true engagement with works and an overstatement of films' brilliance, but without justification or explanation–judgement without interpretation. I see the same happening in contemporary criticism of media art (which may, in a material sense, be the root of Boxer's distillation of the pieces she mentioned to one-liners), except that, rather than deem the work brilliant, the under-informed or under-engaged "critic" deems it awful. If the earlier era was one of "critcism by beauty," I'd call the era entrenched by Boxer that of "criticism by repulsion." (Though we could have a fun naming-contest–is it crit by repulsion, abjection, negligence, nausea, intimidation, boredom, etc…) Goodness knows I am not denying the culpability of the artist for their relationship to their audience (which shouldn't be mutually exclusive from the critic–all of this we began to discuss in this earlier thread: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=17407&text=33154">http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=17407&text=33154</a>), but I think in the ten years surveyed by this show, we've come to a point when it no longer suffices to criticize something by saying "I don't get it" and/or "I don't have time for this." For now the writings we're seeing entrench the fallacy that much of the early academic writing promoted vis a vis new media: that it is without indexicality. This criticism by repulsion, this reduction of Cory Arcangel's (whose name has no "h" in it) or Amy Alexander's, or anyone else's work to one-liners, implies that net art is incapable of having a semiotic function, or employing shades of meaning, of symbolism, or of implication. This gives the work the short life-span of the viewers' attention-span. I can't help but believe that this truncation is media-specific–that this perceived lack of polyvalence is not only pinned upon the work by the perceiver, but that it is specific to their assessment of "web work." I want to say, in explaining this point, that the critic (nay, writer) assumes that net art has all the depth of other silly net memes, but this would be to indulge the idea that things on the internet are somehow inherently shallow, which I just can't manage to believe. (It would be like assuming that TV commercials are shallow because they are short, mainstream, and entertainment-oriented. Not all things on the internet can be described in those terms, but neither net art nor memes nor ads operate without metaphor and metonymy, to put it in psychoanalytic terms.) I do believe that good art work is aware of its contemporary political economy and that our contemporary political economy is one defined by attention spans. This, however, does not mean, categorically, that all net work (or all art work) should or should not be expecte to have the effects of ritalin… I don't know if Boxer subscribes to the 20-second rule of art-observation (the average time someone determined people spend looking at paintings), or if she thinks things in different spaces (ie movie theatres vs galleries vs on the WWW) deserve different amounts of time. I would assume that she had a limited word count, in which case us under-reviewed media artists are lucky that her brevity led to more of our names finding their way into the NYT, despite a lack of engagement. The truth is, it's great that Rhizome & the New Museum would mount a show like this and that the New York Times would send someone to review it. No doubt it gives a bit more cultural "value" to what we're all doing. One of these days (at least before "Every Icon" is finished somewhere, if not before someone officially logs a year in front of 1YPV), I'd like to see shows like these get real criticism–by which I mean true reviews that engage in a process of interpretation. Marisa + + + Jim Andrews <jim@vispo.com> replied: I read the review. It consists mostly of one or two sentences per comment on several of the pieces in the show. That sort of desultory effort really shouldn't make it past an editor. It indicates the author hasn't thought hard enough about the subject to generalize from the specific cases, and also the comments on the specific pieces are meagre. I'd have to agree with Pall. But, also, the concept of the show itself is dull and contrary to the spirit of the rhizome artbase project. Selecting 40 of the many works to show is insulting to the others whose work is in the artbase. The more interesting challenge for rhizome and the curators would be to create interfaces into the rhizome database which are intriguing and allow an experience in the gallery that is as good or better than selecting 40 particular works. ja <a rel="nofollow" href="http://vispo.com">http://vispo.com</a> + + + Jason Van Anden <jason@smileproject.com> replied: Hi Marisa, Awesome critique critique. You have an amazing ability to communicate this art form's intentions to those of us without a new media MFA. Randall Packer closed his post with the question "Why doesn't the NY Times hire a (new?) media critic?" If the New York Times was a democracy, I would campaign for your election to that position. Perhaps the DAT should create posts for "Net Art Educator" and "Net Art Champion". Then again, I would not want to lose Sarah Boxer. As an artist, it is important for me to communicate to as broad an audience as possible. In this regard, Ms. Boxer's last three articles on new media art have provided me with invaluable feedback. She is a mirror of how this art form is perceived by the (fledglingly interested) general public. In the process she is bound to expose some of its blemishes. Jason Van Anden www.smileproject.com + + + Marisa S. Olson replied: Aw, shucks, Jason… that's sweet of you. And I think that you do make a good point. I've always resented art that seemed to be made only for other artists or for certain critics, etc, and felt that it should be able to speak to anyone, whether or not they liked it. Lewis asked "If the art can't engage a casual user, what's the point?" I tend to agree. The question is whether Sarah Boxer is a casual user, or whether she should be, as a New York Times Art Critic. This is part of the reason that I made the aside about whether she's writing for the art section or the lifestyle section. Try comparing Boxer's average level of engagement with the art she writes about to Roberta Smith's (another NYT critic) with what she's writing about. There's no comparison. Boxer seems to have finagled a position as the house expert on new media, which as others pointed out means that hers is the lone non-critical voice coming through. When she shows up and barely/badly reiterates the press release, misspelling artists' names and missing the forest for the trees on the surface level/descriptive (let alone interpretive) details of the work, I have no more hifalutin word for her than Lame. I'm sorry, but since when is the critic supposed to be a casual user? Since things went digital? Since art had URLs? Since we could look at it from home in our pajamas? To downgrade your expectations of the critic–whose job it has been, historically, to unpack and dig deeper–is to downgrade your expectations of the art. You are saying that this art is somehow less worthy of true criticism than art in another medium. I'd prefer to leave the flippant taste-making commentary to the lifestylers and to open a section of reviews and actually find some true criticism. This may sound harsh, but where is our field going to go, how is it going to develop, if the few people assigned to write about it do so in such a non-critical way and then the artists stand back and say "I'm just happy someone wrote about it"? Remember, we're talking about a review of a ten year survey. Net art has ben made for at least ten years, and it has developed into its own genres, different stylistic modes; it has taken up a diverse range of tools to address a diverse range of topics. The whole point of the show is to say that net art is a rich art form worthy of being taken just as seriously as photography or painting, or any other rich, diverse medium or genre. Why should we not have a critical vocabulary for this, by now? Why should we not expect serious engagement from critics, ten years (or more) later? Frankly, I would not be satisfied with this type of non-criticism after late 1997 or early 1998. Marisa + + + Marisa S. Olson added: Lewis LaCook <llacook@yahoo.com> wrote: >[…] What exactly IS the function of the critic? Does the > critic preprocess the material that will eventually be > written into the canon? yes. hopefully. > Or does the critic sniff out > and discuss work that the reading public would be > interested in? yes. hopefully. > I mean, wouldn't art be more effective if it actually > engaged users instead of requiring users to go out and > get a degree and read looooong boring essays on > curatorial practices? I'm not sure, now, if this is a critique of Rhizome Artbase 101, of Sarah Boxer's review, or of my "looooong boring essay," but… The art should not require that the general public "get a degree," nor should the criticism. But the two are still separate and the critic should be unpacking the work, helping the viewer to consider it from various viewpoints, talking about what works/doesn't in the pieces (and why!), contextualizing it. The public can choose whether to look at art and they can choose whether to read criticism or criticism of criticism. I think it was Rob who pointed out that it's their loss if they don't do this. But when I make the choice to read what a so-called critic has to say about a piece, it's because I want to know something more. This is what the practice of criticism is all about. Otherwise it's just writing, and that writing has its place–in the lifestyle section… (Of which i am a big fan, don't get me wrong!) Marisa + + + Lewis LaCook <llacook@yahoo.com> replied: no, not referring to your essay—referring to the general trend of networked art lately— honestly…networked art is still far too young to make too many generalizations about it—that it is periodically declared dead is a sign that somewhere in the mix is a general uneasiness about just what this art is—really, rock star games is beating our asses–ALL game development companies are–and I use more skill in commercial development than I actually see in most net works–And I can't blame the public at large for not being interested in it, which is why I'm defending this critique(no, it wasn't a deep critique, and you, Marisa, would have done much much better;-})— When I look at net.art right now, I see a great paucity of actual content–and a great deal of "demo-head"("Wow! Look what I can make this data do!")–sometimes these trends are interesting (i'm enamored of pall thayer's auto-drawn, for example)–but we're not going to move forward in any way until we stop trying to be sol lewitt, until we can blend our obsession with our tools with the possibility of saying something about our lives— i call for a romantic net.art…. bliss l + + + Geert Dekkers <geert@nznl.com> replied: Actually the function or role of the critic (imho) should ideally be of the expert witness – one who knows enough about the subject at hand to give the casual or passing user/viewer some insight into the background of the work and of the body of work in which the work finds its place…. Cheers Geert <a rel="nofollow" href="http://nznl.com">http://nznl.com</a> + + + furtherfield <info@furtherfield.org> replied: Hi Lewis, Well - in respect of the function of the critic. I do not think that there is just one function or purpose, for like most things in life it's about context… Personally, I do not respect the traditional myth that certain curators are any better than someone else who has not gone through the usual established gauntlet. This kind of rhetoric echoes the same nonsense that many are fed to believe regarding certain artists being better than those artists who have come from outside an institutional, trad-style place. It really should not matter - we are in the real world here, not school… I feel that there are potentially useful and interesting things to learn from both sides of the fence. As in what kind of critic that I personally admire, one who explores outside of their own given histories, and actually finding and seeing those who are not being respected for their work by institutional canons yet - for that is the place where I feel the most exciting and interesting stuff is happening, but I suppose that I would say that… There are cool curators/artists/writers everywhere, whether trad or not. I feel that engagement in observing whether one is being authentic, is an issue, and reevaluating what one is thinking and how one thinks regualarly, is essential, whoever they are - and sometimes canons can block such imaginitive shifts. Yet, equally the challenges that certain academics can offer to people such as myself (not academically trained) who does not totally trust nd believe in the (traditional patriarchal) institutionalized dialect; can always be useful and can move things on. I do not think that anyone owns the 'essences' or 'soul' of what we are all creatively exploring, it is all up for grabs, which is exciting. no one owns it, no one owns it… marc + + + Pall Thayer <palli@pallit.lhi.is> replied: Sarah Boxers two articles that have come up for discussion here, are an insult to new media art. They suggest that it doesn't warrant the same treatment as other art. Read some of the other articles in the same edition of NYTimes as the last article. There's music critique and dance critique. Both handled in a very professional manner. Insightful comments that suggest the authors knowledge of the field and give the artists themselves something to chew on. It doesn't matter if the critique is good or bad but a good critique from someone who doesn't seem to know what they're talking about is a lot worse than a bad critique from someone who does. Engaging the viewer: We can't expect everyone to understand what we do or even care. When one of my fellow teachers, a guy who likes to swap "guy" jokes and bet on football matches, tells me he likes a piece I've done, I'm mildly flattered but no more so than if he would compliment me on my new 'do (which he would of course never do for fear of appearing "gay"). Maybe he really does like it, but probably not for the same reasons that I made it. However, when a former professor of mine and highly regarded and pioneering Icelandic artist likes the same piece enough to suggest to his wife that she interview me for her highly respected radio show on all things cultural, I'm elated. I could care less whether he notices my new hairdo or not. To suggest that we try to bring ourselves down to some public level of understanding is absurd. It's like asking Einstein to teach 5th grade math. If that's how art should be I'll have to erase my brain and run out to the local hobby store and pick up Bob Ross' Joy of Painting tapes. At least I can be fairly sure that my fellow teacher will keep complimenting me on my work. Pall ps. Thanks Lewis. And to John Q. Public, sorry for making you think but you never know when it'll be back in vogue. + + + Lewis LaCook replied: But Pall…. –erasing the distinction between disciplines is what we DO–and one of those distinctions SHOULD BE the gulf between "high-brow" and "low-brow" forms–to cloister oneself like this is to risk obsolesence…and it's politically just what any good totalitaian regime would want– bliss l + + + Jim Andrews replied: > What exactly IS the function of the critic? Walt Whitman said something like 'great poetry demands a great audience.' in the sense, perhaps, that it cannot exist without a great audience. what is a great audience? i don't necessarily mean one that claps loud. i mean one for whom there is something at stake in the art. one who demands art as or more telling than the news concerning the significance of walking the earth. one who will not settle for (solely) entertainment. one who understands that in an enlightened society we are all critics, ie, we are all trying to come to some understanding of ourselves and the world around us, including the art. criticism is dialectic with others on what is important. judgement, as has been pointed out, is important, but more important is the examination of the poetics and taking it to its limits, exploring its implications concerning art and how we live and what we can accept and live with. judgement arises as a result of these things, ie, it is one of the ends of this sort of process. the critic not only alerts us about art but about what it means to be an inquiring, civilized seeker. > Does the > critic preprocess the material that will eventually be > written into the canon? Or does the critic sniff out > and discuss work that the reading public would be > interested in? > > I mean, wouldn't art be more effective if it actually > engaged users instead of requiring users to go out and > get a degree and read looooong boring essays on > curatorial practices? I think there's quite a bit of art out there that *would* engage large audiences if those audiences were available. I also think you're right that there is a large and overly influential academic and insular bulwark of institutional art that is protective of its position which is used to tout an art of privilege and monied aspiration the meaning of which is primarily reiteration of the capitalist status quo, the ivied american dream, art and criticism distant from the need for audience. art as confection, accessory of the upwardly mobile, art as the price of admission to the position of privilege, art as fascion accessory in a culture of brutality where torture is sanctioned in the highest offices. the high becomes low, as Pall says. A culture in which lip service is paid to 'democracy' but the show finally is of forty. ja + + + Rob Myers <robmyers@mac.com> replied: It's important for art to be free, but any project has its motives and its agenda. *Why* is erasing distinctions what "we" do? And *why* should high and low forms be combined by individuals who historically have served high forms? Rendering oneself low simply places one within the normal context of low culture. And art isn't as good as a video game judged as low culture. Placing high content in a low form is pastoral (Julian Stallabrass, "High Art Lite"), the contemporary equivalent of painting lowly shepherds to illustrate a moral point. I'd go further and say that slumming it is just so bourgeois. :-) - Rob. + + + patrick lichty <voyd@voyd.com> replied: All of the conversation here has been very interesting, and I have a certain ambivalence regarding the writings of Susan Boxer. I agree for the most part with Marisa Solon in that her analyses (if we can call them that) are cursory, lack a certain literacy in the field, and are indicative of the casual viewer. Now, let me say why I have an ambivalence about this. On one hand, let's consider that this is the NYT and not the Toledo Blade (which, by the way, has a wonderfully acute editor who writes some beautiful cultural critiques). The contemporary idea of the neoconservative delegitimization/dismissal of expertise which ranges from the Bush statement that the "C" students can look forward to being President and the fundamentalist Christian assertion that it is better to have a big heart than a big head smacks of a Harrison Bergeron-esque privileging of the mediocre. Forgive me if I conflate terms on my prior statement, but I think that it comes down to a contemporary anti-meritocratic bent. Boxer epitomizes this, in that she appears to represent the man-on-the-street, "I Don't know much about this, but I know what I like" rationale in this article and the one on the Boston CyberArts festival. On the other hand, Boxer illustrates one of New Media art's cardinal sins - its cultural myopia and aesthetic specificity. Although the mark of significant art is its experimental spirit, truly great art 'grabs' you. And, one of the problems that I have seen with New Media is that it has exhibited a cultural arrogance that demands that the audience must almost do research in order to know the context of a work. These works mirror my contention regarding much of 80's Contemporary Art; in that it resembled a bad joke about postmodernism that required the viewer to read countless volumes of Foucault, Barthes, and Lyotard, only to find that the punch line was rather abject in itself. The joke is one that is on all parties involved. However, as I state two poles of the argument, I see a number of quantum points in the continuum between these points. One is that I see that New Media that does not transcend its medium may remain marginalized, with those crossover works which can speak to the Contemporary Art culture punching through the membrane and going into the museums. Another might be that there could be niche cultures (such as Contagious Media) that will serve as a public conduit for other works, and others may be mass media hacks which address the populace. The contemporary art world is a milieu is one that gives the New Media artist the challenge of engaging, subverting, or even hacking in order to address the Susan Boxers of the world, if one truly cares about them at all. But I think that from a personal perspective, New Media practitioners should care, if the genre (sic) wants to engage the larger art milieu. However, I see Boxer's last two reads of New Media works problematic to be sure. But then, with her rather cursory treatment of the subject, she also brings up an opinion of art in general that one should probably consider. Although I personally differ with some of Susan Boxer's reads of technological art, she does represent the viewpoint of many gallery-goers that I have experienced, and is a viewpoint that one should consider. But if I had my druthers, I'd put Mirapaul over there in a heartbeat. + + + patrick lichty added: I want to clarify that I meant that Boxer's notes were cursory, not Marisa Olson's. Marisa's spot on. + + + Philip Galanter <list@philipgalanter.com> replied: I can understand how some might find Sarah Boxer's review a bit insulting or maddening. After all, internet artists put a great deal of thought and effort into the work, and to simply have the results cast aside with a glib observation or two seems somehow unfair. But who ever said art, or art criticism, was fair? More to the point, though, this criticism is ignored at the artists peril. There is, perhaps inadequately expressed, a message there and we should thank Ms. Boxer for it. Boxer's focus on time is, I think, quite telling. I suspect that a good number of internet artists started out as primarily visual artists, and have somehow underestimated how much internet art is in fact a *time* art, and how important that is. You can see this in the classroom everyday. Student painters or photographers who decide to take up video are usually (at least at first) bad at editing. By bad I mean really terribly awful. Narrative is fragmented and incoherent and then defended in class critique as some kind of "higher" fine art aesthetic rather than being called what it is…bad filmmaking. Interminable static shots are the norm. Fade to credits never comes soon enough. And so on. The artist's infatuation for his/her own images becomes the audiences burden. Painters and sculptors understand that issues of absolute size, what they call scale, are fundamental problems to be solved. For time based forms problems of scale also include the dimension of time. Fine artists must be masters of space, but time artists must be masters of both time and space. These problems become multiplied when fine artists turn to the internet as a new medium. That time counts shouldn't be a surprise. It is the rare work of music or film or stage that asks the audience to take a leap of faith, to struggle through the entire work without satisfaction along the way, just to get to a big payoff at the very end. Music frequently begins with the introduction of compelling themes that give the listener an incentive to go further. Good films not only end well, but give the viewer rewards all along the way. How much internet art does this? I've seen far too many examples of internet art that seem to disregard the element of real time, and thereby ignore or miscalculate the experience of the audience. To be sure the nonlinear nature of much internet art makes the compositional problems of pacing exponentially more difficult. But that's no excuse…that's exactly the challenge the artist has willingly taken on. I suppose one can be an artist and do the work and not care a whit for the audience's experience. But don't blame the audience, or the critic, if they click a few times and then walk away. It's not their fault. It's yours. + + + t.whid replied: I've been watching this discussion unfold, but since I'm an interested party felt that I should hold my comments back. I think that Marisa's initial post summed up my thoughts on the review fairly well. But Philip's points are a bit off-base IMHO. below: Philip Galanter wrote: <snip> > > Boxer's focus on time is, I think, quite telling. I suspect that a > good number of internet artists started out as primarily visual > artists, and have somehow underestimated how much internet art is in > fact a *time* art, and how important that is. > > You can see this in the classroom everyday. Student painters or > photographers who decide to take up video are usually (at least at > first) bad at editing. By bad I mean really terribly awful. > Narrative is fragmented and incoherent and then defended in class > critique as some kind of "higher" fine art aesthetic rather than > being called what it is…bad filmmaking. Interminable static shots > are the norm. Fade to credits never comes soon enough. And so on. > The artist's infatuation for his/her own images becomes the audiences > > burden. I can't argue with your point that many video or other time-based artists have a horrible sense of time in their work. There was one of the Cremasters, can't remember which one, that made me want to murder Mr. Barney. But equating the work in the ArtBase show with innane student video does a whale of a whopping disservice to the work in the show. Two of the artworks she takes to task for consuming too much of her time are "Every Icon" and MTAA's "1 Year Performance Video." Both of these pieces have time as a significant element in the work in very deliberate and (if I do say so myself) effective ways. To brush off Simon's "Every Icon" with, "I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of time," isn't just dismissive, it's just plain ignorant. Yes I suppose we can all have a chuckle over her oh-so-sparkling bit of snark, but Simon's piece is a sublimely beautiful conceptualization of computational time; it's gets to the very core of how computers and humans are different in a very physical way. It deserves a serious observation but its essence seems to have completely flown over the airhead reviewer. > > These problems become multiplied when fine artists turn to the > internet as a new medium. That time counts shouldn't be a surprise. You seem to be making general points that you might make to your students. It comes off a bit condescending since you're referencing a specific show and a specific review of it. I can't think of one artist in the show that seems to have been caught off-gaurd by that whole time thing. If there is one, please clue me in. > > It is the rare work of music or film or stage that asks the audience > to take a leap of faith, to struggle through the entire work without > satisfaction along the way, just to get to a big payoff at the very > end. Music frequently begins with the introduction of compelling > themes that give the listener an incentive to go further. Good films > > not only end well, but give the viewer rewards all along the way. > How much internet art does this? Short answer: lots. But using cinema as an example misses the point of most of the work. > > I've seen far too many examples of internet art that seem to > disregard the element of real time, and thereby ignore or > miscalculate the experience of the audience. To be sure the > nonlinear nature of much internet art makes the compositional > problems of pacing exponentially more difficult. But that's no > excuse…that's exactly the challenge the artist has willingly taken > on. > > I suppose one can be an artist and do the work and not care a whit > for the audience's experience. But don't blame the audience, or the > critic, if they click a few times and then walk away. It's not their > > fault. It's yours. As a general point, of course you're right. But as a specific point to this specific exhibition it just doesn't hold up. Most of the work isn't particularly musical or cinematic in the show. "Every Icon" and "1 Year Performance Video" are more or less linear in their time-based component, but neither of the pieces expects a viewer to keep watching.. and watching.. and watching. Both expect you to get the idea and then move on. *But* both expect you to keep running the concept in your head long after you're gone, something I'm not sure the reviewer is capable of. + + + t.whid added: There are plenty of problems with Philips response as I noted (and you removed to focus on my one little bit of snark. If she can be snarky in the NYT, can't a get a tad bit in on Rhiz without you resorting to insulting language?) But your response it totally off-the-wall. There is no anti-boxer arg. There is a pro-critical response arg. She didn't say enough in the review to really respond to, I'm responding to her lack of any critical approach what-so-ever and general 'lifestyle'-style of the writing. NYTimes and any other publication: give us a serious crit damnit! Not this fluffy infotainment. As I wrote to Lewis (which he seemed to misunderstand), I want an engaged viewer, not a viewer that might as well be browsing t-shirts at the mall. I'll take what I can get as far as an audience goes, but a reviewer? At least a reviewer should be engaged. + + + Rob Myers replied: On 1 Jul 2005, at 05:20, Lewis LaCook wrote: > So we only make art for other artists? So we only make medicine for doctors? Art is made for its audience. There may be a problem with net.art/art computing: it may just be the folk art of the digital creative class, with an audience of a nerds (who aren't as rich as the hatas seem to believe). Or it may be more representative of a society in transition to digital technology (and the ways of being that motivate/emerge from that transition). If I made a piece of Nu Metal or Gangsta Rap, an FPS, a Mills & Boon novel, a martial arts film, a sci-fi cartoon, if I made any of that, it would be recognised that there are formal and content-al concerns to the work that require specialised knowledge. Ambient music, Russian cinema, it would be recognised that you might have to make some effort to engage with it. A critic might dismiss these works as examples of a valueless genre, but they would have to recognise that they were doing so. And they could not fall back on the "elitism" or exclusivity canards. So we only make art for other artists? Hell no. No more than we only make drugs for doctors. But don't be fooled by the apparent easy availability of 'Popular' culture. It takes a lot of work to get people to engage so casually with something like Pop Idol. Millions of dollars of work. Art can't do that, it doesn't have the budget. And it shouldn't have to. Active regard is an empowering skill, passive consumption isn't. We're providing different value in art than popular culture isn't. - Rob. + + + Dirk Vekemans <dv@vilt.net> replied: For what it's worth: Any art 'on' the internet or using the internet involves a (extra) coding/decoding to/from 'machine readability' of some sort, and a transmission process based on communication protocols between machines. Both processes are more directly 'temporal' and inherently cyclic than other publication methods like publishing a book or making and exposing a picture. Even without any 'dynamic' content, any website is cyclic in its existence (request-response _time_). This is imho not just theoretically important, it has some massive consequences in the perception of the work of art, one need only think of the trouble some people are having of trying to sell web art in ways equally profitable as 'traditional' art, or making it collectable. Or the digital-analog question. Once you publish a book it has its moment of publication and a (life- or dying) time from then onwards. Paint a picture and it starts decaying. Make a website and it starts its process. You could consider that to be a decaying process as well, but the actual and instantanous renewal with each 'use' of the work remains (a song that remains the same? i doubt it) I don't think there are any 'pure' distinctions to be made, though. There's always the hybris (or 'debris') of other art forms interfering in any art process. You're always (re)coding other art. If not, it's not art but Google or some other web service. Tradition and the individual webtalent. And then of course the internet itself is just code over time, actualising its code on code every moment… dv + + + Pall Thayer replied: I think some of the people participating in this thread are missing the point entirely. Sarah never says that "most of the artbase 101 show was mediocre" and if she had, that would at least be a step in the right direction. But then, of course, she would have to back it up with something. The point is that all she really says is that she went and spent some time at a show at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. When we see something under the header "Art Review", we want some meat. We want a professional assesment of the work. What stands out and why? What doesn't and why not? Perhaps also a couple of hints that show that the person really understands the work. All she gives is hints that show that she doesn't understand which in my book means that she shouldn't be doing the review. Would you trust a rock critic to give a decent review of an opera? Then there's that other thing. Some people seem to think that the artists mission is to make art for the public. I'm sorry, but they forgot to put me on the payroll. People that really want to experience my art have to come to my level, I'm not going to theirs. If someone finds a piece of mine intriguing, they can look at my other work to put it into context and if they're really interested, they can even find a couple of interviews on the net and if that doesn't do it, my email address is all over. If I were interested in catering to the publics expectations and wants, I would've gone into graphic design or maybe I would paint pretty images on silk pillows and hit the craft-fair circuit. But I'm not and I think the majority of us would say the same. Phillip: I'm not sure what compelled you to write your post. Since we're talking about the Rhizome exhibit, I would say that a lot of those works approach time in an extremely compelling way. And do it in a way that shows very well the flexibility of the time component in the internet/computer medium. "Fenlandia" is cool in a time-play sense. Sarah obviously missed the point entirely since she was always waiting for something to move. I think Sarah Boxer is the one that misunderstands the artistic concept of time and not the artists. Pall + + + Philip Galanter replied: Interesting discussion. Anyway here are some quick responses in the interest of correcting misinterpretations of my previous post. Also some observations …all in no particular order… re: Simon's "every icon"…my impression is that Boxer "got it" and the "I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of time" comment was an (attempted) jest very much in tune with the spirit of the piece. re: my comments regarding time and it's good and bad use in art. I wasn't attacking this show as having lots of examples of bad time art. I'm not taking a position on that. I'm saying Boxer's attention to time as a theme in her criticism is not flip but rather is entirely valid even if expressed in the article in a "lite" way. similarly re: the opinion that Boxer's review had so little content there was nothing there to respond to. Well, first, empirically there apparently is something there to respond to because we have lots of responses even here. But more to the point, I wanted to "help" Boxer by pointing out her choice of "time" in internet art as a thread to string her comments on is insightful…I can easily imagine multiple books on the topic, and that her cautionary message about poor use of time in art is worth hearing. Reasonable people can disagree whether this or that piece deals with time well, but simply her bringing "time" to the front of the room is enough of a service to justify the article. re: my comments regarding film and such. I wasn't making a claim that good interactive art making is *just like* making a good film. That would just be silly. What I *was* pointing out was that the transition from static visual art to visually stimulating time art is a perilous one. The fact that some responses questioned whether internet art was, in fact, a time art at all underscores for me the weak state of the art in this regard…even in the critical language itself. re: the question of making art for oneself vrs the audience, and who should meet who more than halfway or not. I didn't say it is somehow wrong for an artist to optimize his activity for his own satisfaction. I affirmed that artists are free to make that choice. I only said that having made that choice it is an unreasonable expectation on the part of the artist of the audience that they will find the work equally optimal for *their* satisfaction as well. i.e. artistic self-satisfaction is no guarantee of audience satisfaction, and all too often they are conflicted interests. One should try to have reasonable expectations about this…and not deny other artists a different balance. cheers, Philip + + + Eduardo Navas <eduardo@navasse.net> replied: Hello all, Been away until the 30th (for over fifteen days) and I am just catching up on e-mails. I have a brief comment on the NYTimes review. The review does not tackle anything concretely but simply casually glosses over some of the projects. Boxer clearly shows no understanding of online works and her critical position is vaguely presented with abstract references to previoulsy existing artworks, like paintings, when she explains that the viewer will probably spend more time in front of any of the works than on a painting–as if a longer time period justifies the meaning of a work of art. Based on utalitarian ideology (which is the foundation of the United States' work ethic), time is money, and if you spend time doing something like viewing a work of art, then the work must mean "something." The more time you spend, the more it must mean… Shallow. Her position is fully exposed when she writes on John Simon's Every Icon, "I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of time. Which raises the question: what kind of art do you have time for? It's a question that comes up over and over with art on the Web." That time is the central issue for Boxer shows the problematics brought forth by many new media works, as the conventional viewer is unable to cope with the unexpected parameters particular pieces offer. Boxer introduces the time element as a stigma for online works, that she takes such position shows that she is not willing to understand what new media is about. I suggest to ignore any of her write ups. Unlike Greenberg's which demanded a clear opposition in twentieth century modernism, due to his clear understanding of culture and sensibilities of art practice, Boxer's position is completely flawed with no strong argument–she clearly does not care about culture, she does not question or propose, but simply lists with no clear position other than that she writes for a large newspaper. Ignore her. Let her be alone in her own world. Forget that it is the NY Times. Take away the title of the paper and the review is simply embarassing. E. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization and an affiliate of the New Museum of Contemporary Art. 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