In June I traveled through southeastern Europe from Venice to Athens, where I’m looking at art and blogging. Part three of the travelogue is about Belgrade, Serbia.
With a population of two million, Belgrade is twice as big as Zagreb, which is thrice as big as Ljubljana, but the sizes of these three cities have a paradoxically inverse relationship to their cultural infrastructure, particularly at the intersection of art and technology. While little Ljubljana had enough events to fill my schedule for four days, Zagreb’s handful of galleries were in a summer slumber. But organizations were actually there, even if hibernating, while Belgrade had nothing. Many attributed that to the smaller country’s attempt to find a niche or a brand for itself in Europe’s crowded contemporary art world. “New media in Slovenia was as a more or less organized way of deterritorialization from the ex-Yugoslavian context, a systematic attempt ‘to be more serious than the system itself,’" said Maja Ciric, a Serbian curator, citing Zizek. “But in Belgrade the new media paradigm is self-driven and performed individually.”
Belgrade had a small but active demoscene in the 1990s, which gave rise to one of the most interesting art collectives in the former Yugoslavia, Kosmoplovci (pronounced “kos-mo-PLOV-tsee”). The name means something like astronauts or space sailors, and comes from a 1970s do-it-yourself science and technology magazine that some demoscene friends found at a flea market in the early ‘90s. The members of Kosmoplovci are fond of rummaging through the past, and their varied output—which includes internet works, videos, music, comics, and books—usually involves allusion and found media. Satelitska Stanica is based on an old 8mm film extolling a joint project with Japan to build a satellite station in a remote Yugoslavian province; the reel was salvaged at a flea market and transferred to digital devices with minimal interference. Marko Kraljevic, the Turk-fighting hero of Serbian epics, appears in previews of 2D and 3D video games that Kosmoplovci will probably never make. Self-aware makes public footage from a broken webcam, primarily the bewildered faces of the camera’s owner and repairman in the shop.
Recycling material follows from Kosmoplovci’s structure, where the four or five core members regularly bring in a dozen or more “temporary” Kosmoplovci, who specialize in specific media or channels of distribution (Aleksandar Opacic, for example, has a ragged, layered style of drawing that defines Kosmoplovci’s comics). All their videos can be freely downloaded, or have distinct online versions, while paper publications often get passed around to friends. Their distribution systems put them outside markets and conservative institutional systems; and while Igor, the collective’s de facto leader, said he does tech support for cultural institutions in Serbia, which helps the group maintain a link to the establishment, he spends just as much time on web sites for his drum-and-bass DJ friends.
A couple of weeks before going to Belgrade I wrote to Nikola Tosic—who specializes in posters and spare prose pieces—with a request to meet and chat, and in a gesture of Balkan hospitality he replied with an invitation to stay at his place for the duration of my visit. Tosic lives on the outskirts of Belgrade, fitting for an artist who was active with Neen but keeps his distance from the local scene. His artworks, which he tosses off when he’s not working as a designer or training for triathlons, are deliberately marginal. A thank-you note to the internet’s creator and a description of the human species intended for aliens have clumsy graphics and a plain but quirky usage of English, which gives them the poignancy of stories by a precocious child. Tosic also organizes ephemeral events, like Meet in a Nice Restaurant, a networking-as-art gathering that has happened in Milan, Istanbul, and Transylvania. His current pet project is Triathlon Team, which involves hosting and designing blogs for his favorite triathletes. The idea of designating a team for a purely solitary sport, and trying to make humble triathletes the subject of media attention, has the same dry, barely-there humor as his cartoonish pieces.
Carving art up by nations is always fraught with missteps. Geographic proximity makes it tempting to draw similarities between Kosmoplovci and Tosic, though their paths haven’t crossed in years and they have never collaborated. They have stronger analogues with DIY scenes and Neen, respectively, than anything in their neighborhood. Still, local conditions—namely, the absence of an institutional peer network—has an affect on their choices; no one is telling them they shouldn’t make art about triathlons or drum-and-bass. “Belgrade’s lack of a real new media lab or institute makes it more free,” said Ciric, the curator. “Because when new media works are produced they are a result of the pure individual creativity.”
Editor's Note: Nikola Tosic took issue with his representation in this piece. Please see comment thread below for his view and a correction.
Regaring the part which focuses on me (Nikola Tosic), this article is a complete misinterpretation by writer Brian Droitcour. Not only did he completely mistake on number of details but he also misses the meaning and fabricates a new artificial meaning which suits the purpose of his writing.
I kindly request Rhizome Editor that this article is taken off or at least parts about me are complete erased.
I am also greatly disappointed that writer Brian Droitcour has never told me of his intent to write an article which includes me, never asked me for any permissions to use any images or any of my work, and never offer me a chance to check the article and approve it. His manner is ungrateful and disrespectful of me as a person and as an artist.
Nikola Tosic
www.tosic.com
Final statement:
http://tosic.com/final-statement-on-rhizome-article-by-brian-droitcour/
now finally that my adrenalin dropped a bit i can focus and write a slightly more objective statement regarding the brian droitcour rhizome.org article "on tour: southeastern europe travelogue, part 3".
it is true that i welcomed brian droitcour in our home and he was our guest for several days. i have done this because my impression was he was travelling through and might need a place to sleep over and cut costs. i am always happy to host people who pass by or visit. i did not know what actually brian does. <strong>he appeared to be no different than any other traveler</strong> - little cash and interested in some relaxation and i was ready to help out. i was not aware he was working or he was interested in writing about anything. he did want to meet artists but i also want to meet artists or athletes or anyone when i go somewhere.
problem is that <strong>he never said he will write about me</strong> or anything i do. he never presented himself formally. i was keen to discuss my work with him, and also his work, but he seemed bored by that and we spoke about other stuff. he actually showed extreme disinterest in my work which from one side was ok cause we had other stuff to talk about, but on the other i was keen to talk to people about my work as it always offers me a perspective.
he never declared that he is researching me for an article and i never treated him as a journalist. <strong>i never gave any statements, never gave him any documents</strong>, nothing. i was hanging out with this guy for few days trying to get to know him and for him to understand me better maybe. like with anyone who visits.
indirectly i got a link to the rhizome article a day after it was published. he never told me about his intention to write this nor asked me for approval or use of any of my material.
<strong>i was never asked to contribute to this article, i was never asked for any permissions or any approvals.</strong> the article was a complete surprise to me. maja ciric sent me the link and she said i got a lot of space. i did not read it, i quickly skimmed it and emailed brian with "nice text". i felt stupid sending this but we had another argument over emails and i wanted to send something nice. i actually did not read the text. i saw he wrote quite a bit and read few words but i actually had super hard core headache and fever and could not focus.
next day, today, i sat and read the text.
my first impression was: what the fuck is this???
i mean this text is like a parody or something. <strong>it has nothing to do with me.</strong> my heart rate was like 200bpm. my head was pulsating from adrenalin. i was super angry. i was like this for most of the day. who is this guy to write all this bullshit about me. he was in my home few days ago, my guest, why did he not at least tell me about the article???
<strong>almost every word in that text is totally wrong.</strong> i can say he got my name write. everything else is like a joke. like someone making fun of what i am and what i do. and how many people have already read this? how did this get approved?
<strong>also things he says about ljubljana, zagreb and belgrade are bizarre.</strong> also the way he quoted maja ciric, i have met he recently but it seemed strange that he was saying these things and i also did not get an impression he interviewed her. i called her on the phone and she was confused as well - she was never interviewed and she did send some statements but asked to check the text before publishing and he never did this.
basically <strong>brian droitcour just put together whatever came to his head and published it with no checking</strong>, and no interest in opinions of people who were in the text. he placed strong connotations on me and maja yet these, at least in my case, are terribly wrong (and i think in maja's) and also he presents everything in a totally wrong concept.
i was super angry, i was beyond myself. why would someone do this to me? <strong>why would someone do this to anyone?</strong> is it not so simple to just send the text for checking, or to formally interview people? i always ask my subjects and i am always available for comments.
i have to apologize to rhizome staff as i emailed them in panic. i hope they reconsider this statement.
i emailed brian to take the article off but he refused. in my opinion he probably does not even understand how much damage he is doing and how much off he is. he could have changed the article not to include me but he did not do it. he had the whole day to do it.
brian droitcour came here, spent few days, he was our guest, he ate with us, met my parents, i drove him around, paid for his food, have him gifts, even made him sandwiches for his next trip. he did not understand much, i think he is not a very understanding type, <strong>he seemed very focused on certain things but totally isolated from others</strong>, and he made up his own story which gives a very wrong picture of what is actually going on. what some people are trying to do, what their goals are, what the environment is etc…
<strong>at first i was impressed with brian</strong> and i respected someone who would start a research trip. he reminded me of explorers. he was strange a bit but i still respected him and i thought i understood his goal and wanted to help. i thought people who explore should be helped.
but unfortunatelly <strong>he is not able to understand what he is exploring</strong>. he is probably one of the more isolated people i have met. he is superficial. at least in this case he demonstrated this methodology. he is not able to understand beyond what he concludes in first few seconds which is, in his case, totally wrong.
<strong>there are people here who have been doing work and fighting for their work for decades</strong>, culture is being developed for millenniums, you can not just come over, summarize it in an article in 5 minutes, press publish on rhizome.org and lock these people in your superficial stereotypes.
<strong>rhizome.org and such media have enormous power</strong> and such power must not be given to people who do not respect it and do not know how to use it well. who are not willing to take time and study the subjects and understand them. it can not be given to people who treat decades of someones work, someones identity, as a piece of chewing gum which has to fill todays editorial requirement.
some respect should be given to the subjects and people take a bit more to be studied than brian droitcour's 5 minutes.
unfortunatelly brian droitcour also writes for other magazines and, i am guessing, plans to expand his writing and curating career. i hope that now he learns to respect people more. however, after i have met him and after this incident occurred, i doubt that he has it in him.
i would still appreciate if rhizome.org would take off that false article and reconsider their editorial policy - <strong>learn from this error</strong>.
Dear Nikola,
It is not our policy to remove posts after they have been written. I spoke with Brian, and he verified that he did speak to you about writing this travelogue. His take may not be in line with your own, but as a writer and a critic, he has the artistic license to interpret and respond to your work. If you feel there are factual points that need clarification or if you want to elaborate certain details of your own practice, please do so. We encourage response and feedback and discussion to everything that's published on the site.
Regards,
Ceci
> he verified that he did speak to you about writing this travelogue
than Brian is a liar
not only there was no discussion about him writing anything but what he wrote is bizarre
> If you feel there are factual points that need clarification or if you want to elaborate certain details of your own practice, please do so.
its easier I write what he got right:
my name is Nikola Tosic and I am currently in Belgrade
the rest you should delete
or what do I have to do?
sue Rhizome.org?
I am not saying you should delete the article, just delete anything that mentions me.
He could have written a new version by now easy but he refuses.
This is really starting to feel like I am being tortured here.
Some guy writes bizarre stuff about me and now I can not do anything about it.
What is this?
Yellow press?
I have to be cool with paparazzi like Brian so I hope he does not invent stuff like this anymore????
How many signatures I have to get to you, how much clear I have to make it that this article is not about one sentence, it is a complete fabrication and misinterpretation.
It's really none of my business but I think you must be misinterpreting parts of the article, Nikola. It's all good and positive. A writer who writes about someone's artwork writes about their interpretation of the work. We can't expect anything else. And when the results of that interpretation are positive, regardless of whether they conform to whatever ideas you may have had when you created the work, then there really is nothing to complain about. Keep in mind that Brian is from a very different cultural background than you and, for this reason, it's perfectly understandable that he has a very different perspective on things.
I've never been to Belgrade and have no idea how things are there. But I have traveled a lot and never have I ever heard that it is common practice anywhere for a writer to ask for permission before writing about someone's art work much less ask the artist to review an article before publication. That just doesn't make any sense at all.
I have no idea what it is that you're disappointed with and I can almost guarantee you that no one else is going to understand what the problem is seeing that what you've received here is a high profile, positive review of your work.
best regards,
Pall Thayer
I have taken my works out of Artbase (except my latest work briandroitcour.com).
Rhizome.org does not care to respect my art nor offer me a chance to defend its point of view.
Obviously, if an unprofessional journalist can cause damage and write whatever he feels like, which is contrary to any journalist rules and respect towards subjects, and this is allowed by Rhizome.org, this is not an organization I wish to relate my work to.
If we all deal with ideas it really is not comfortable that someone manipulates those ideas. We produce art on our own money time and energy. It takes years of work. Someone comes and ruins it on a whim.
There is no respect here. This is arrogance and ignorance.
I mean it is a joke this happens after I have been with Rhizome for almost a decade.
You guys should really rethink who you let write for you and who you support.
I remember when rhizome.org started and I was friends with some first writers.
I also write and am friends with pleanty of people in art world on all sides to know that what Brian wrote is not only fair but unprofessional.
If you do not believe me and all the fuss I am making than what can I say…
It is time to leave this mess…
You guys obviously lost your way and guys like Brian can build their careers on half arsed bullshit writing.
Hi Nikola,
I understand its frustrating to be written about it in a way that doesn't ring true to you. But I agree with Pall; the article was meant to be positive and reads that way.
Are there particular articles online that you think describe you work accurately and could share with our editors and readers to this list? Or perhaps some of your own writings? Pairing those writings with Brian's travelogue would be helpful in this context.
Best, Lauren
For sure I can write an article about my experience of Brian's visit. That sounds fair. Offer my point of view.
Hi Nicola,
That wasn't what I was suggesting because its clear, already, that you and Brian have different takes. I was asking if you could share links to previously published writing about your art–by you or by other artists or critics, or anyone, that you feel is truly reflective of what you do.
I ask because Rhizome is not going to take down the piece; we publish multiple articles a day and we stand by what we write. So, we won't take down articles if people don't like them–but we do ask for more opinions and more conversation, feedback, etc. We're not publishing in a vacuum, we're writing with a community and a larger conversation in mind.
As I see it, the issue is not about the fact that you and Brian see things differently, its more about your work and how its interpreted, which is why I ask you to share writing with this list in which the meaning of your work, in your opinion, is truly conveyed.
All the best, Lauren
No one writes about me and this is how I like it now. I am not interested in press. If I do need press I will write a press release and send it out. I will not host a guy in my home to spy on me.
But I fail to see the point to show someone else's writing about me to prove how most basic elements are wrong.
You are missing the point.
Brian's article is NOT a slight misinterpretation. It is incorrect.
It is not about him seeing things differently, it is about him completely fabricating.
Second, Brian wrote about stuff I told him in confidence in chats over coffee, I was never told he will take these as press statements.
This is not about freedom of interpretation. You do not understand because also you do not know me. You are asking me to send you press clippings and portfolios. I do not care about this. I do not want it. I do not want to be part of this machine and system. But also I do not want someone to write fairy tales about me and to disclose my personal information in a public article.
Lauren, what is your phone number? I will call you and explain. I am tired of talking about this publicly and trying to philosophize it. One phonecall will explain how silly it is.
Email me your phone number or skype to nikolatosic@gmail.com.
My skype is nikolatosic.
And I will explain.
Writing here seems not to change anything.
It is not possible for you to understand the mistakes and damage of this article.
As per your request following people will confirm my arguments regarding above discussion:
Queen of Spain
Bill Gates
Salvador Dali
the girl next door
High Priest of Burma
Editor of CNN.com
Michael Jordan and all 5 of his children
Kermit the Frog
my mom and dad
my best friends
previous previous director of Moscow Museum of Modern Art
the guy who once made coffee for Fidel Castro 5 years ago
my invisible friend JORKOH
Steven, guy I met on depressed.com chat (he always supports me no matter what!)
all taxi drivers from Stellenbosch, South Africa
a girl I wanted to sleep with
Maria X, greatest artist on earth who is not yet discovered by Brian and rhizome.org
Queen of Netherlands
King of Spain
I can provide you with contacts to all these people except JORKOH who speaks only to me through telepathy.
If this is not enough to prove that Brian's article is rubbish I really do not know what else to say.
Waiting for your phone number
sorry it took so long, my press agent was on vacation in capri and his phone was off
+++
none of my business either but…
This is really ridiculous.
If there are FACTUAL errors in the article, point them out to the editor's of Rhizome and surely they'll post a correction.
If there are no factual errors. You have two choices: live with it or write a response addressing what you think are misinterpretations, misrepresentations, etc (which it appears you already did).
If Brian did not let you know that he was planning on writing his impressions of his visit with you, then that *may* have been unethical from a journalistic standpoint. But we have only his word against yours, so it would be hard for the Rhizome community to form any opinion.
> If there are FACTUAL errors in the article, point them out to the editor's of Rhizome and surely they'll post a correction.
i emailed a list of errors to rhizome.org editors and i got no response.
also discussions about art are not as precise as mathematics, and i do agree certain freedom of interpretation is necessary, and welcome. i always loved to hear what others think about my or any work. it makes the work richer.
however there are things in an article which are pure nonsense.
here is few: i do not specialize in posters???? i mean what is this about.
he talks about doing art about triathlons - i have no art about triathlons????
he classifies me as south eastern artist when i am based between several places, he placed me in the article as if i work localy but stay away, i mean all these bizarre things he says. what is that???
but to explain this to someone who is not here and does not know me is not possible. how can i prove it. if you do not know me or know my work and brian is the only source than i fail. my identity is his to be shaped.
i would not mind if he wrote my work is utter worst crap - this is his opinion - but i really do mind nonsense. i mean, really, i thought this text is parody.
but i can not explain it how unless u know me.
i tried to give some examples how he would write about warhol the way he wrote about me - check out tosic.com - but obviously this is not getting through to people.
believe me, i would not get so upset or invest an ounce of energy if i did not believe that i have the right to do so and that i have been done unjustice.
me about being delierately marginal, about doing art about triahtlons, even outskirts of belgrade, this is all bizarre!
i saw brian work - he writes quickly and works superficially. he made up his mind before he even did research. whatever makes the story up. its typical bad journalism. i am not sure what his training is but writing for internet art websites is not much of a journalism position and thats for a reason. with all respect for communities like rhizome.org that build something, but obviously editorial and writing quality is low.
as for his unethical behavior - YES - it is unethical.
also i told him i might consider in time to use the triathlon for an art project, i said this in chat, i said i might need few years. next thing i know its announced on rhizome.org as an artwork. this is a big problem for me because i sponsor these triathletes and we have a business agreement. i can not use them like this without checking. he puts my relationship in danger without my approval. he got the info while he was in my place and published it without approval form me.
i spoke to maja ciric and those quotes he made of her - these are NOT quotes. but this is up to her to take up with editors of rhizome.org and brian. she is dealing with that in her own way.
now i am forced to even discuss my work more publicly and expose it to people i do not know.
i can not bug people with writing recommendations. i can not mix my work, my art, my friends in bullshit scandals like this. i emailed first brian to change things, he refuses, i emailed rhizome editors they refused, i am making this stupid mess here and people ask me about factual things.
well he disclosed information which he had no right to, he did distort information and present it out of context.
it is not about him saying something is 15 if it is 13. art is not like this.
but some comments he made are as wrong and superficial as that. but i do not want to enter a discussion about details cause also the whole concept in which i am presented is equally wrong.
what i do not understand is why did he not change the text in an hour on sunday when i asked. if he had any respect for me or my work he could have done it. we could have done it together on the phone.
why did he not tell me he was writing it or send me a draft to approve. it would take me 10 mins to change it.
he also did not do it with maja who specifically asked him to send a draft for checking.
he just did what he wanted the way he wanted and is hiding behind rhizome.org.
i am in a far away country, i am not friends with the nyc crowd, people i was cool with are doing something else now, there is a new crowd of people like brian and they are like a sect or something.
his article did me wrong and is unfair and unethical. but what can i do about it but write stupid comments. certainly i do not know anyone important who can tell this idiot brian to just take two paragraphs off.
i mean just imagine, you have a guy in your home, and u just hang out, i mean he was here and he said he was translator and he works for rhizome. i know curt kloninger, he also wrote for rhizome ages ago, i though ok this is some guy like curt. i have no concept of professional art writer in my life, i do not care about this.
and you chat to this guy about art, i chat because i like it, i am not selling anything. i speak about what i want, what i like, about other people, i chat to him like a friend, i ask for his opinions. i tell him what i dream about and what id like to do in next few years.
then, a week or something later, i get an email from someone else how there is an article about me containing content from our chats. and also totally misrepresenting my attitudes and my work. the same person who did not care to even ask me anything about my work.
like imagine you told someone your business goals or something, like in a chat, and this someone publishes it tomorrow in media without asking and ruins your plans. or publishes how you hate someones work, but you said this in a moment, chatting to a guy, maybe joking.
this is what brian did…
he abused his welcome, he pretended, he used information and he placed in an article.
why he did this i do not know? i mean im not brad pitt or anything… i dont know if he gets money or what goes through his head to do this.
the whole triathlon team thing is dangerous for me, for my work, for my relationship with people i have been building this relationship for several years. his comments on my marginality and hinting on my relationship to kosmoplovci and such stuff. i have made a festival with them in 2002 which was advertised on rhizome.org as well. all this he used out of chats and discussions which were not with a jorunalist but with a guest and a potential friend.
i mean, what is next?
will he use everything i have said to him in some other articles?
will i be haunted by this brian for next decade how he will blackmail me with his articles and use what i told him while he was my guest?
will he do it to others?
he turned a hobby i enjoy very much mostly because i meet artists and discuss beautiful things into a nightmare which can and is hurting me.
how can people understand this i do not know!
all i know is that rhizome.org editors are taking his side by default which i think i do not deserve.
such behavior by brian should be corrected or god knows what next thing he will do.
and i am repeating - im NOT the only one who has a grudge against him for this behavior, but i am the only one making the fuss here.
as i understood in last few days he obviously has a method of doing this and im not the first nor the last one, but i am the one being upset publicly.
from legal point of view i am sure i have strong arguments
- he used my images without permission
- he did not follow journalist protocol
- he used triathlon team brand, ownership of my business, in a incorrect context
maybe the problem is in my english language and my attitude, so i am not being very clear
but believe me, you would definitely be equally upset if this happened to you
would you react as i do? probably not, but upset for sure yes
this guy is not fair and not cool and rhizome.org should know better than to protect him over this
I'll write some about Nikola.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Here are some Nikola links:
writin':
http://www.nakituminayashi.com/buythisbook/
flashin':
http://godotiswaitingfor.me/
URL buyin' / site stattin':
http://www.tosic.com/usage/
gettin' interview:
http://www.onequestioninterview.com/2007/09/nikola-tosic.html
doin' interview:
http://tosic.com/tracky-birthday-interview/
nikola curatin' me:
http://x.nekada.com/programs/r+d/cdrom/001/
http://educational-sticker.com/2002.02.24.standard.htm
me curatin' nikola:
http://lab404.com/data/tosic.html
http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/14599/
http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/15515/
if only this were still online:
http://tosic.com/document_photos/
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
One of my favorite Nikola pieces is a fluxus-like instruction called something like "run." Similar to Yoko Ono's instruction piece "fly" (the instructions of which are "fly"), except with "run," you are really meant to do it. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, in the middle of a sentence, whenever you feel like it, immediately stop what you are doing and start running. Just run in some direction until you feel like stopping, could be for ten miles or for three minutes. Do this as often as necessary.
+++++++++++++
Talking to Josephine Bosma, there is a difference between art criticism and art history, although it's hard to do the former properly without being somewhat informed by the latter. With early net art, art history is tricky, because "being there physically" doesn't necessarily make the historian any more privy to the history of the work, since the work is often happening online across borders.
For my money, historically, Nikola Tosic could be considered the godfather of what I might call Rhizome-endorsed (circa-2008) one-liner formalism. You know, the thing where you make a low res animation, buy a single URL for it, don't have an artist statement for it, and just let it be what it is. This behavior eventually leads to "neen" (how Miltos Manetas gets the credit for something that was happening four years prior to 2003 is surely related to something having to do with "the art world" [whatever that is]). Neen popularizes folks like Rafael Rozendaal and Angelo Plessas, which leads (in at least one way) to the contemporary "surf club" [f]rat pack. So to write about Nikola and imply that his work bears some marginal resemblence to the work of someone like Damon Zucconi is to get the whole history completely backwards.
I have always thought of Nikola's work as a kind of outsider.net.art ( cf: http://deepyoung.org/permanent/outsider/ ), but I include Arturo Herrera and Harrell Fletcher in that category, so this doesn't mean that Nikola doesn't know what he's doing. Nikola was at the Fabrica lab in Milan for some time, so he's hardly a parochial figure. But he happens to live around Belgrade (sometimes). And I happen to live around Asheville, North Carolina, US. And neither of us happen to live (or care to live) in New York or London. Yet you won't discover that much about my net art from visiting Asheville, although I'm sure you could make some tenuous connections if hard-pressed.
Josephine Bosma is writing what one hopes will be an accurate history of first-wave net art. Who will take the (scatalogical) time to write an accurate history of second-wave, dys-konceptual net art that includes somebody other than Cory Arcangel? Who will take the (even more scatalogical) time to fact-check such a history?
I am the Lorax / I speak for the trees,
Curt
Nikola Tosic is one of the best artists alive today, if not THE best. I am not very enthusiastic about most contemporary art. Finding out about Nikola and his work was/is very meaningful to me and reassures me that not only the masters of past centuries were able to produce groundbreaking ideas.
I am not familiar with the writing of Brian Droitcour but I am very surprised with his article especially after he met Nikola in person. At first the article seems positive but when you look closer you find out it's quite patronizing and totally misses the point. The point is that Nikola is a genius, someone who is completely underappreciated by most of the world.
one of my favorite poems: http://tosic.com/thank-you-mr-death/
huh????
ok this is getting weird now rafael…
i have sent a super long email explaining in as much detail i could why i should be taken out of this article. for some reason there is no reaction yet. rhizome.org is discussing?!?!
what is there to discuss???????
take me out - period!
i do not care if brian writes war and piece, if rhizome.org becomes the next cnn.com, if whatever happens after. i just want my name and my projects to be out of this rubbish so there is no connection between me and this article. period. stop. thats it. no negotiating. simple.
either do it or not.
rafael's energy is amazing. he always moves and creates. non stop.
thanks curt as well, we have not chatted in a while.
u can see who took over your work - where do they find these jerks like brian?
i miss the old stuff. these new wannabe kids should be working with yellow press, not art. i miss people who take time to think about stuff. who are persistent. who take years. like you.
thanks
i am afraid to say anything about anyone. i understand how the written word works. it is very harsh. sometimes i am rash but i do feel the fear.
someone like brian does not feel this. he is detached.
ok i was a bit too arrogant to say i understand how written word works. i do not understand this. but i respect it. i am afraid of it.
Hi Nikola,
I respect Lauren and Ceci. I don't know Brian that well, but thus far his dealings with me personally have been upright. But your experience is obviously different than mine.
I was never on staff at Rhizome. They have just paid me to perform various functions from time to time (unfortunately not as kinky as it sounds).
Peace,
Curt
OK
I am super angry at all this.
I do not understand why it is taking 4 days to delete one paragraph.
I just can not think about anything else.
this stupid article is already climbing on "nikola tosic" results.
brian's retarded rubbish will soon define how clients and partners see me - as a deliberately marginal designer from southeast europe who makes art about triathlons and specializes in tossing posters because there are no new media centers in Belgrade which is 4 times bigger than Ljubljana.
thank you brian!
take this rubbish off NOW!
i am reading further
amazing LITTLE ljubljana and SEE from Venezia to Athens
i mean this enough is super bizarre
the more i read this the more i think this should not be deleted
if i took LSD for a year non stop i would not be able to write such nonsense
i think this is more bizarre than anything i have ever written, and trust me, i try hard to be bizarre
brian is like ed wood of art journalism
i still want my name out of this rubbish
i have yet to meet nikola in person but i have high amount of respect for him as artist and as i am former athlete and i agree that separating sports and art life is incredibly important because at 14 years of age i had invited my soccer friends to pizza at my house and my soccer friends were angry that i had invited "goths" (artists) to the party and they were mad that one goths complained about meat on the pizza. i had to use my babysitting money to buy a many meats covered pizza for most of the soccer team win back respect after the incident. nikola and i had a meaningful conversation about bean nutrition on skype chat around 2 months ago.
one time i tried to use a pasta of nikolas work to troll 4chan. it didnt work. then i learned more about his work. and 4chan.
ui:uc:ow u:ii, nnv?inkn:owsde ni::kola+tosic+br:ian=droi:tc::our :-= gen.ius 2009/9
Dear Brian, If Nikola wishes to be removed from your article you could strike through all the references to his name and artworks without changing the orginal text. On a personal note I find it amusing that no-one has noticed the obviously contradictory behaviour of contemporaneously requesting to be removed from a post yet keeping an absurd and long thread of public comments going. But that's why I too find Nikola the best poet ever. Thankyou Nikola.
The problem with Brian Droitcour's article is that, at least the paragraph on Nikola, is bullshit. I'm not using "bullshit" to insult. Rather, I use it in the formal sense, as Harry Frankfurt, a philosopher at Princeton described it in his essay "On Bullshit" (you can get it at Amazon, if you don't know what I'm talking about).
Here's a quote from Frankfurt that is relevant in this discussion:
"It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose."
I'm calling Droitcour's paragraph on Nikola bullshit primarily because the text is written in such a way that picks out some random trivial and mostly unfounded observations to paint a picture that is neither true nor false, but serves to fill the white space that I guess Droitcour has to fill to justify his salary, travel grants or whatever other personal reason he may have. If he cared to know about Nikola's work, he would hardly ever write the following:
"His current pet project is Triathlon Team, which involves hosting and designing blogs for his favorite triathletes. The idea of designating a team for a purely solitary sport, and trying to make humble triathletes the subject of media attention, has the same dry, barely-there humor as his cartoonish pieces."
I met Nikola about a decade ago, and have seen quite a bit of his works over the course of that period. I have observed firsthand how he works with the triathletes. This should be taken literally, since I have also spent time with him and some of the triathletes for two consecutive years ('07 and '08) in South Africa, where Nikola spends at least an equal amount of time as in Belgrade. Notice that Droitcour anchors Nikola firmly in Belgrade, which is bullshit. As far as Droitcour's observations on Nikola's "current pet project" go, these missrepresent the facts completely: Nikola advises every triathlete on everything related to their communication with fans and sponsors. He has been very influential on how these people, who are usually completely focused on their sport, use the web as a medium of communication. The hosting and design that Droitcour mentions is like saying that Slavoj Zizek, whom Droitcour mentions in passing, is mostly involved in pushing words around pieces of paper. Sure, both of them have to do some manual work, since the technology we use to communicate demands it, but pushing words or bits around is merely a necessity towards the realization of much more relevant aims. At least in sports, I have not seen anything like what Nikola is doing with the triathletes, that is, a combination of education, art and design that is truly unique, and not only that, but beneficial to everyone involved or interested in triathlon. If only Droitcour was more interested and less prone to trivial remarks, he might have written something truly engaging about this.
When I read this piece, I thought that Rhizome took Droitcour's writing seriously only because he must be doing something relevant in some other medium. I took it as a case of giving someone some space to try out travel writing. Writing really did not seem to me to be his specialty. I later found out (from http://readrussia.com/about/brian-droitcour/ and some other google search results) that others describe him as a writer. I guess this confirms that words have very different meaning to different people.
There are some comments on Droitcour's article on Rhizome, which try to defend the idea that he is allowed to have any interpretation he likes of what he sees. Fine, but once the interpretation becomes inconsistent with reality, then the characters of his story should be clearly described as fictional. Even the worst movies place a note in the credits, that they are fictional works, and that any similarity with actual persons or events are unintentional. Droitcour's article intentionally deals with Belgrade and people he met there, and gives the actual names of these people. Why is then his text more fiction than fact?
yeah but this article will get high on google and brian's nonsense will define my identity probably for next 50 years on search engines cause i do not have time to beat rhizome on search engines, rhizome will always be stronger.
"…just measure it in inches" AW
clearly recessions give artists time to bitch the live long day. I agree with andy. nikola, you rock but let it go bro. besides, anyone that would form an opinion from a single google search aint worth frettin' about anywho…
why are people telling me to let it go?
i am sure that if someone wrote nonsense about you you would not feel different…
about an athlete friend of mine a journalist wrote similarly annoying article in newspapers, my friend got outraged, i did not understand him, but now that it happened to me i can understand. i also told him to let it go but trust me when it does happen to you, it is not so easy to let go.
especially since most media does change stuff when you complain however rhizome is quiet and unresponsive which i find especially rude and disrespectful. i mean if like huge newspapers can print apologies and changes i really do not get it why damn rhizome cant edit one paragraph out.
theres no fucking way im letting this go. i just started. this is me being nice. next step is a lawyer and more serious stuff.
and btw i got so many emails of support over this of people who also both got fucked by brian and other journalists who write crap like this. and some of these people fought as well for their right to be presented properly.
matthew it will happen to you at some point, probably by brian, and you will understand how i feel. until then it is not possible that you understand and i see how it can seem like im jerking around for nothing.
but keep in mind rhizome.org is not letting go either.
I feel you Nikola. I do. but I have to say that I was vaguely familiar with your work when I first read Brian's piece and his post actually got me interested in diving deeper into your work. so while I'm not justifying what he wrote is factually correct you should know that there is at least one person out here that has become immersed and therefore enriched by your work b/c of the piece.
thanks matthew
that is one fortunate effect which is probably 10% of the audience
however, assumptions must not be made on the top 10% best experiences, what is damaging is bottom 30% and those are always most dangerous.
i have sent a list of very serious arguments to rhizome.org. these are arguments which go a bit beyond the fun on this forum and are quite serious. rhizome.org refused to act on it in last 24 hours and i see this as deliberate aggression. it surely can not take 24 hours to make a simple decision weather you wanna continue hurting someone or not.
one of the biggest problems is brian's referral to triathlon team as an art work. i have a very particular relationship to triathletes i cooperate with. this is a business relationship. calling this piece an art work is damaging. it can cause great confusion and problems with everybody surrounding this project. brian completely fabricated this as this project never was and is not an art project. it is as much an art project as much is astana cycling team.
also it is very dangerous to call everything i do an art project. it will make people i work with think i am fucking around.
another problem is that i myself am trying to raise funds for a kids project here and i really do not want potential grant givers to see that i am classified as "deliberately marginal designer". as the project depends on my reputation in a certain field and grant givers might even be aware of rhizome.org and will probably check my references online this is all very confusing. in their view brian is a journalist and rhizome.org is an established media source based in nyc, an authority, they will not understand the quality of this article an stereotypes which brian uses are extreme.
this is only start of the issues…
rhizome.org has this information, i explained it in an email over like 5 pages or something. word by word. they have not acted on it.
i hope now you understand a bit more…
in our lives and our work, which is hard enough as it is, we really do not need idiots causing unnecessary confusion and making it even harder. no?
i mean, trust me, i would not react as i am reacting, if there was not a serious issue behind this.
i do not want to be forced to explain my personal details, i already explained way too much.
not only i did not have my privacy with brian but also now i am forced to explain my private and personal issues even more.
my hope is that ALL of this is deleted. it just takes 1 min to do it.
me from the infamous article, and this discussion. just needs to go away.
then we can all go back to our lives and struggles and forget this brian and he can continue writing about little ljubljana and whatever else he fabricates - as long as it is not me.
i will not rest until this is achieved.
Congratulations, you're complaining about the page rising in search engine results, and with every comment that you make yourself you give it more relevance because you're name is mentioned (and linked) once again. You're digging your own grave (at least if you really believe that this article is harmful for you).
Portrayals about oneself and ones work come and go, if you don't like something on the internet, a request to delete everything because it hasn't been approved, misinterpreted or terribly paraphrased, oh well, boohoo, learn to deal with the dynamics of publications in new media - after all, your work seems to be based in it.
I, for one, am just sick of the amount of useless mail in my Inbox because of this.
"Stand by what we write" = Totally meaningless phrase
Hi Nikola,
My Uncle and I have the same name. It's not a very common name. He is an actor who performs monologues at Christian churches (he is actually very good). He owns curtcloninger.com. When someone does a google search for me, the first thing they see is his site. It is my lot in life to be mistaken for him (and vice versa).
Here is some (good) press about my "Traffic Report" project in which you participated:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/21/business/compressed-data-don-t-mourn-yet-these-obits-were-only-designs.html (mirrored here: http://lab404.com/misc/obits ). Here is a relevant excerpt: "Professional duties can collide with underground pursuits online: 'There's just one Web.'"
I am not telling you how to respond to your situation. But it is at least an interesting opportunity for you to modulate the situation online. You say Rhizome will always be stronger on the search engines. Maybe not. Here is a recent project proposal (that didn't get funded by Rhizome): http://lab404.com/xanadu_hijack/ . It involves the use of collective agency to hijack the word "Xanadu" online. Perhaps this approach could be combined with other approaches and applied to your current situation.
Language, control, historical canonicity, popular opinion, mediation of value, institutional strategies vs. individual tactics, local scales vs. global scales, legal vs. technological agency, the inordinate power of google, the public dialogue that is happening here vs. the back-channel dialogue that is happening via facebook/skype/email, new media artist as self-critic/archivist/historian – these issues might be "useful" enough to justify a few more emails in my own precious inbox.
Technologies To The People,
Curt
It is Rhizome's mission to support artists and we do this through multiple programs everyday. Of course, when an artist has an issue, we take it seriously and consider the circumstances. In the case of our blog, we publish a variety of perspectives, hold our writers to high standards, and stand by their opinions.
We are not going to remove the article from our website nor will we significantly alter it in order to cater to one individual's perspective.
Nikola has been asked several times to provide a list of factual errors to back up his claim that the paragraph regarding his work is a fabrication. Each time he has responded with either a reiteration of his request that the paragraph or article be removed, or with a list of complaints that mix fact and interpretation to an extent that makes it difficult to discern what he finds inaccurate about the article. Given the unusual nature of this situation, we feel the best option is to let the opinions of Nikola and community members expressed in this comments thread stand as an idiosyncratic "correction" to the post.
Regardless of what is written about it on Rhizome or any other publication, Nikola's body of work stands on its own merits. We wish him continued creative success in the future.
now eating popcorn
@Michael Zeltner
you are focusing on one part of what I have said. i clearly stated many times i do not wish to express my private problems and you forget the procedure at which Brian gathered information. please do not focus on one issue only. however this discussion does no increase popularity and there are no links.
> I, for one, am just sick of the amount of useless mail in my Inbox because of this.
i do not know who you are or why you are getting email. but if you are sick of getting email than try imagining someone getting into your home, listening to you and publishing it on a website in a week without your permission.
@Ceci Moss
> Nikola has been asked several times to provide a list of factual errors.
And I have provided it. When you say several times you make it sound like I did not provide it, like I have something to hide or I do not know what I am talking about. List is provided and I have not received any replies from you. Lauren asked for my phone, no phone call, I also said I see no point to negotiate on the phone when my request is clear. If part of the article was correct and if my email was not sufficient I would discuss it, but since I spent an hour writing one email with all possible details I see no point to negotiate and explain further.
> his claim that the paragraph regarding his work is a fabrication
I did not say that it is a fabrication, this is a Brian style generalization. It would not take me an hour to write it is a fabrication. You are interpreting something I wrote in again a bizarre way.
> Each time he has responded with either a reiteration of his request that the paragraph or article be removed
exactly. my requests are same - take me out or take out the article. goal is same - i do not wish to have this written about me. do you expect me to change my request every 2 hours? i fail to understand this statement. it is written as if i do not know what i am talking about. again this stupid tactics.
> list of complaints that mix fact and interpretation to an extent that makes it difficult to discern what he finds inaccurate about the article
WTF????????? this is bullshit!!!! it is clear i can and do not wish to publish information i have given you and you are playing on this now. well for one slovenia is not SEE.
what about my complaints about brian's method - that he never followed any journalist procedure. is this guy to keep on spying on people? this is paparazzi and yellow press! there are no comments on his way of conduct from rhizome.org at all. clearly brian is a friend of yours and you are protecting his behavior.
> Given the unusual nature of this situation
unusual that brian goes around and spies on people? is this what you are referring to?
and what is your stand on Brian's methodology? Clearly you realize that what he did is unfair and unethical. I would like to get official rhizome.org comment on this.
you have comments by at least 6 people on this forum who confirm this article is bogus. anyone i ask will confirm it. brian acted unethically. i mean, how much in denial can you be?
you asked me to send comments, corrections and confirmations by others. all is delivered.
what is the problem here? do i need to get like 10 000 signatures? you are playing with impressions here. distorting the truth. article is beyond any doubt to anyone who knows the facts. the problem is that you are in your bubble and you do not get this. not only it is not truthful but it is done in an illegal and unethical manner. no different than someone robbing my home.
you asked for list of corrections, you asked for people who confirm it. what exactly is the problem? be specific please…
I think it's important to defend the right of critics to write what they like in whatever way they like.
Are we going to have the farcical situation where ( as happened to restaurant critics recently) artists attempt to use the law to enforce a particular view of their work? It's not, as a number of people have pointed out, as if Brian Droitcour's comments were remotely negative. Even had they been so it wouldn't alter the principle of the thing a jot. Nor would it if Brian Droitcour had asserted that Tosic's work had actually been made by small green tentacled creatures from the planet Arg. I meet up with loads of artists/writers when they're over here in the UK. Sometimes I show them round London and sometimes I buy them lunch - it doesn't oblige them to say nice (or even accurate) things about my work. How bizarre to think hospitality carries that obligation on the part of the recipient! Brian's comments may or may not have accorded with Tosic's own view of his work but that is entirely the *point* of critics & we should defend that privilege unless we want an art world that is even more mushy and corrupt than it is already.
Tosic's Violet Elizabeth Bott act -"I'll thcream and thcream 'till I'm thick"- verges on the behaviour of the bully. I for one would like to express my solidarity with Brain Droitcour and with Rhizome - damn right don't alter it in *any way whatsoever* -to do so would be an inexcusable betrayal both of Brian Droitcour and of any notion of *independent* critical commentary…
michael
Hi Nikola,
I am not too sure if you realise this but everyone on Rhizome’s emailing list which I am sure is in the thousands maybe millions receives every post that is made about an article/work etc.
So what Michael Zeltner means by ‘I, for one, am just sick of the amount of useless mail in my Inbox because of this’ refers to every post you have made- we all have to read/delete it whether interested or not.
I have been on the Rhizome list for about seven years now and this is my first response to a post.
I think you should be happy/content/untroubled because -
1. I now am familiar with your work
2. Like others I don’t necessarily agree with the article, but you should give it kudos as there are millions of internet viewers around the world who know about you and you work (and they can form their own opinions).
Sorry to everyone who needs to delete this from their inbox.
Best of luck to you Nikola,
Sonya
The fact is that without Nikola's reactions to the article, I would have probably for the most part dismissed Brian's article as superficial and sophomoric journalism (no offence Brian, I don't know and I'm not referring to your other work I'm simply stating the kind of emotional "hit" your article gave me off the bat, so to speak)
The issues that seem to be emerging here are at the intersection of private and public. Nikola seems to be stating that his identity as an artist is somehow compromised by some of Brian's comments, and I see his point; for example the term "tosses off" is clearly negative in this context (i see no relevance in the speed or apparent effort of his artistic production) and in particular implying that his artwork is done in his spare time when he is not being a "designer" or "triathlete". This is unnecessarily reductive for an artist as complex and unique as NT. It would be like referring to Andy Warhol as a window-dresser. It rings more of key-hole journalism than serious critical thought, and I can see where Nikola takes issue, albeit in a futile torrent of comments.
It would be interesting to hear Brian's responses.
Again, thankyou for reading.
> Michael Szpakowski
here are some facts i would like you to consider:
- brian was in my home as a guest, we chatted, i said i enjoy having a new person to whom i can discuss art. i told him about my potential plans in art which i specifically said would take 1-2 years to develop into works. suddenly he published this on rhizome.org. this means he pretty much disclosed information he got from a friendly conversation. this has nothing to do with his impression but is unethical.
- many things are just not correct. calling me a designer is like saying bill gates is a programmer. yes he programmed sometimes. i really do not understand why rhizome.org has a problem taking out stuff like this. yes i use photoshop but i do not nor ever sold design in last 8 years. it is something i have done long time ago.
michael, if he actually spent time with me in an interview, declared himself as a reporter, and then decided to write i am a latent homosexual who makes idiotic art and whatever, the worst stuff possible, believe me i would not care. i am not worried about his interpretations of art, i welcome it. i am not worried about your interpretation of my behavior as it is true if you see it that way. i really am not. this is not a matter of freedom of press, freedom of expression, interpretation, or anything like that.
problem is that he was not fair in his work and stuff he says is just wrong. its no interpretation.
this is why i wrote the parodical examples how he wrote but the problem is you can not understand this because you are not here and you do not know me. i do not understand delicate issues within american contemporary art, i would not understand subtle diferences in saying one or the other thing, why one is silly and one is right. but the stuff he says is just super bizarre.
fact is he is not someone who took time to study something and made a conclusion with which i disagree. he obviously wrote this in 5 minutes, he had an idea of some drama of the article and forced the subjects to fit this idea. it is a superficial badly done piece of writing. maybe he wrote much better pieces, he actually seems to me like a smart guy but in his own way and he did impress me with some of the comments he made. and i do like few sentences from the article. but the method he worked, his disrespected and arrogance and other elements which are just plain bizarre are a big problem.
this has nothing to do with interpretations and please do not put me in a context of some angry guy who wants to be a control freak. again this is not a problem. if you feel like it please write an article about my behavior here and make it the worst one and i will welcome it. but do not write that i am like this because i am from balkans, that see starts at venezia, that i am a baker and do not disclose information i tell in you in confidence to thousands of people.
i chatted to brian about many things. what is next? will he publish all this in other articles with some kind of quotes? can he just invent more stuff which is even more damaging. please understand this.
also i would like to see brian write about black usa artist in a context of: his african american love of chicken. it is hard for you to understand how superficial stereotypes he uses are. but if you put them in the context in usa / uk you might be able to understand it.
i mean here we are laughing at this article for like a week now. it is just so extreme it is unbelivable. if i smoked like 10kg of marijuana i would not be able to write this kind of bizarre fiction.
unfortunatelly no one in rhizome or online gets this and now there is this discussion like its some press freedom or like he knows what he is talking about.
there are people who study local art and they take years and write seriously. brian is not respecting them with his 1 day study and pretending to know something. and thats what he is doing - when he was here he could not give a damn about my or any work - he checked stuff from ten years ago, even wanted to see a gallery which is like in a tourist brochure. i told him immediately where he found this stuff. he seemed at most disinterested. suddenly he presents himself as some expert who understood how things work. he is faking it big time and you are falling for it only because he paid a ticket and came here.
at best brian is borat of art journalism but instead of from kazakhstan to usa, he went form usa to kazakhstan.
@ sonya nielsen
> I am not too sure if you realise this but everyone on Rhizome’s emailing list which I am sure is in the thousands maybe millions receives every post that is made about an article/work etc.
this is an unfortunate functionality of this site. please press delete if you are bothered but i have to speak up.
@ Andy Simionato
> Nikola seems to be stating that his identity as an artist is somehow compromised by some of Brian's comments
im not worried so much about my identity as that he fabricates and fakes. as i said, call me anything you want and its fine, as long as i can understand it is an interpretation based on at least 5 minutes thinking. i really would not care. i agree people should interpret any way they want and publish it.
but please understand stuff he writes is just so crazy you would not believe. problem here is you can not see this cause we come from a different place and a different situation.
here are examples:
this is how brian droitcour would write about rafael rozendaal:
Rafael Rozendaal is an artist, webdesigner and Andy Warhol fan from Maastricht, Holland. While Rafael pays his bills by doing freelance webdesign he uses his free time to produce drawings, oil paintings and Adobe Flash animations. Rafael has focused on drawing mustaches and painting canvases in full colors with triangles on edges.
Other major cultural contributions from Maastricht are White Devils metal band and Johan Van Dynk, 65 year old naive artist and performer who trained his dog to pain portraits. However Maastricht offers extremely poor cultural support so Rafael was forced to experiment with Adobe Flash software and find his own way.
this is how brian droitcour would write about miltos manetas:
Miltos Manetas is a Greek immigrant artist who focuses on producing oil paintings of floors, tv screens and women. Especially interesting is his study of his Chinese girlfriend Yi Yo. In free time Miltos has experimented with Adove Flash and HTML coding as an art medium.
Miltos is currently residing in London due to lack of support from his native Greece. No one is preventing him from painting tv screens in London!
this is how brian droitcour would write about andy warhol:
Andy Warhol is a Polish American painter know for his paintings of every day food items from supermarkets. During the interview with Andy Warhol he offered me a cigarette and I was touched by his Eastern European / Polish politeness. This Polish artist has left his mark on me with his dominant use of red and magenta. There are many Warhol works which can be admired but I am touched by his Tomato Soups.
This amazing specimen of Polish American movement and culture in our native USA will be remembered for generations.
However, Andy Warhol and Ronald Regan are contemporaries they have never officially collaborated. It is not clear if there were intentions by either parties to interact.
this is how brian droitcour would write about paris:
I arrived in Paris and stayed for 5 hours on the train station. After I checked the initial brochures on the train station it was clear to me that in spite all the history and advertising Paris did not have much to offer culturally. I managed to talk to few people I heard about a decade ago and some I found on a local website for pet exchange, but due to my lack of knowledge of French and their culture, we did not get very far. Although Paris is five times bigger than London it still offers 23 times less cultural content.
do you understand what i mean? it is not about interpretation, it is just bizarre silly! like he is on some mega drugs. and he can fake it with people who never met me, saw belgrade, ljubljana, zagreb. but fortunately in 2009 we have internet and email and comments.
if he just told me he is writing an article, if he just asked for any info from me, a statement or anything, if he just sent me the text to check, or even edit things on sunday.
none of this.
he is a very strange guy and i think his behavior is bizarre. all this is like super weird what he did.
wrapping it in the context of writers interpretation does not work. if he did a regular interview and asked for statements and interpreted that - sure - whatever he thinks is correct. but the method he used is extreme and it lead to putting information ahead of time.
imagine you work on an art piece which is not complete and someone visits you in your studio and takes photos and puts it up. you can not get info on movies, chapters of books, anything before it is finished. this is controlled. brian did not respect this.
only one of many problems in this article.
I have not come to a conclusion about the Nikola/Brian debate, but in trying to make up my mind, I visited Nikola's site briandroitcour.com and was quite taken with it (to my surprise, I expecfted it to be angry and instead Nikola has used to flame war to make something interesting). It makes a real point and is quite amusing. Whether it is fair to Brian is unclear, but it is funny.
From the entry on Jeff Koons on briandroitcour.com:
——–
Due to lack of opportunities in Midwest USA, this American born art star had to orchestrate his comeback in London, UK.
It is not clear if Koons will be collaborating with other artists who have moved their focus from USA to London - like Madonna.
London is five times smaller than Mexico City but offers 150 times more cultural content, however restaurants are more expensive.
——–
I suspect the source of Nikola's anger and the Rhizome staff's seeming inability to see his point of view at all (I am not saying Brian's piece should be removed or censored but I think there could be some compromise such as allowing Nikola to post a brief, polite rebuttal that would appear with Brian's piece) is a cultural misunderstanding. I don't know if Brian meant to be condescending in his piece, but it seemed condescending to me. There is an arrogance in going somewhere for a very few days and then purporting to make large general statements about the art scene there, or lack of same.
It is quite easy to go somewhere or even to live somewhere and miss major artistic movements that are happening. (I lived near Buffalo and even took (mathematics) courses at the university there during the big years of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E movement in poetry, and I even read some poetry at the time, and I had no idea innovation was happening in my geographic area. I would have said at the time that Buffalo had no cultural scene whatsoever, as I was aware of no cultural scene and there were no good bookstores at the time etc. Later on, I found that many postmodernist poets and writers had been in Buffalo at the time I first lived there… It's a good thing I wasn't writing a cultural travelogue…)
I also think it is normal for a journalist to inform people that they are being interviewed and to allow them to verify their quotes (but not the rest of the article or its conclusions!) pre-publication. Since Nikola claims he was never informed that Brian was writing about him and Brian says the opposite, we will never know what happened. I have trouble believing either party's account, actually, since Nikola knew Brian was engaged in a "research" trip so I don't think the article could have come as such a big surprise, but on the other hand, Nikola seemed at least initially to be genuinely shattered by the article.
Millie
" (I am not saying Brian's piece should be removed or censored but I think there could be some compromise such as allowing Nikola to post a brief, polite rebuttal that would appear with Brian's piece)"
They already have. It's here. It's this thread.
This whole discussion just keeps getting more and more absurd.
> Whether it is fair to Brian is unclear, but it is funny.
i am way beyond thinking about this in terms of brian. his name is there by accident. 100 years from now his name will belong only to this site and not to him as a person. he still can get brian-droitcour.com or droitcourbrian.com. also nikolatosic.com is free for him or anyone else to take.
> Nikola's anger and the Rhizome staff
i have NO anger whatsoever, i am trying to be professional and binary as much as i can. i am also expressing my temporary emotions as they come along but it is hardly anything that sticks for more than 5 minutes. at the end of the day this is an objective argument but the other side is not being objective at all. they are being too protective of something they do not understand. as their loyalty to their friend brian is inspiring, some things should be above that, like loyalty to their own mission.
> There is an arrogance in going somewhere for a very few days and then purporting to make large general statements about the art scene there, or lack of same.
yes brian is arrogant but not wrong about no new media centers. but, his observation is temporary. maja ciric whom he interviewed as well set up upgrade, i myself organized njumedia_ in 2002, and there are a lot of other things. for sure belgrade is a desert compared to new york city, but his statement is strong and superficial. but this is something that belgrade pr should address, just as i am sure slovenes will not like what he wrote in other reports. but i am not focusing on this at all, i am focusing on my own name. but i can see that pretty much most of the stuff he wrote about others is not better. for one his concept of see from venezia to athens is super bizarrre. he should have checked wikipedia at least and get his geography right. this is like saying i travelled around mexico from oregon to paraguay. however general lack of geography and publishing professionalism in rhizome.org staff allows this to be published. but again, this is not my problem.
> we will never know what happened
as i said several other people had the same experience and his quotes of maja ciric are not correct - those are not quotes - but this is up to maja and others to deal with him, i am guessing in public. i can not force these people to act as publicly as i do. they deal with matters like this in their own way with their own conclusions. for sure if they spoke about their relationship with brian it would be clearer what is going on.
also when you do meet brian it will be clearer as well. i paid for his lunches, drinks and drove him around for four days, took him to our summer house, even aid his museum entrance, made him sandwiches for the trip and he did not even care to send me the article to check, nor even called me to say: ok nikola whats wrong, lets fix this. he is one of the most detached cold arrogant persons i have ever met. in his mind all he thinks is how i am disturbing him and his writing.
> since Nikola knew Brian was engaged in a "research" trip
first brian is not the only one who travels these parts and does research. i actually realized he is a writer of this sort only when we met with maja the last day of his stay and i was quite surprised. i really did not think about his work and i was happy to have a guest i can talk about art a bit, and such subjects. just like him, anyone is welcome, if they are not afraid of my above reactions. and everyone is welcome as long as they respect my privacy and do not publish my stuff publicly.
also few interviews i have done in my life there was a clear procedure no matter if im in italy, serbia, south africa… there was respect from journalists no matter what their conclusions and interpretations were. sometimes i did not even read what they wrote as i did not want to know about it, as long as they respected the procedure i am fine with what they wrote. but in brian's case this is not true.
you underestimate how little i could realize if things are not told to me clearly. journalists are people i get an appointment with, they have a business card or something, they record what i say, and they quote me properly and let me check. i should not need to guess or think what someone will do.
what is next? should i be scared of talking to anyone from rhizome.org or such publications because anything i say can end up in some article and possibly distorted?
there is a reason for procedure.
also not many people realize that classification of internet art by countries an especially by purely political regions is completely idiotic. brian focuses on see which is another term for balkans which is a very particular political distinction. there are no relations between this geography and art. this is not 18th century.
this first should have raised some eyebrows - that rhizome is publishing such a series of articles that uses this bizarre classification of art.
see is related to politics and has been shaped by cultural funding and manipulations of the last century. it is related to stuff like activist and social related art and bullshit like this. it has a very particular connotation. no different than something like viet nam era poetry. is andy warhol a viet nam era artist? they did exist in the same period and in the same geo-political region. by brian's logic andy warhol could be classified together with bunch of anti war propagandists. or is any artist part of the local culture only because he is somewhere for few years or owns a passport. i know quite few artists that have multiple passports. one internet artist in particular has israel, german and usa passport yet lives in spain - how would brian classify him? yet his work is online. would be interest to see brian write about him: typical of his middle eastern hospitality… :)
this alone is starts an avalanche of problems.
just as kosmoplovci is demo, and as brian says i flirt with neen and maja works internationally, brian managed to put us all together under his SEE piece because he met us for two days here. the term south eastern europe in any relation to internet art is already a strange and strong statement on art history. luckily brian does not get published in more series media or i am sure academic society would object this or at least question it.
what would happen if he would have met me in south africa this winter?
and i never liked being called an italian artist as well…
maybe if brian researched a bit he would realize why vuk cosic called himself no lands man.
i commented on this bizarre classification in my letter to rhizome.org editors and their response is above.
again this is only a part of the nonsense in his writing.
"no one is telling them they shouldn’t make art about triathlons or drum-and-bass"
- So am i to assume that in NY someone IS telling you that you cannot?
Hi Andy,
You and other commenters have raised some legitimate criticisms of this post, and I'd be happy to talk about them. Unfortunately, because Nikola has threatened to sue Rhizome, I'm not at liberty to respond. Thanks for understanding.
i have threatened only yesterday, you had from sunday afternoon to respond?
if you offer your points of you i promise i will not sue, there you go, spill your guts, you should offer your point of view of course
@ andy
i am sure i sound angry here, but believe me, me and some friends here who get this stuff, we have not laughed so hard in ages. i mean his article is just so bizarre you have to laugh. i think no matter how much i try i just can write something as weird and bizarre as brian did.
he is actually a genius this guy, too bad he does not even know it.
i told him many times while he was here, he wants to be curator or writes, specialized in some regions and whatnot. he should do art. he is quite good at it. he is not analytical at all which is crucial for journalist, he is lost in his own world, which i guess, by stereotype, should be great for art :)
if something good comes out of all this mess it should be that brian changes his life from lame wannabe curator / writer to being an artist.
so funny his article, i mean im still laughing. i can read it 50 times and laugh.
but scary as well. and damaging.
i will sue!
Final statement
Introduction
Brian Droitcour emailed me about meeting in Belgrade during his travels. He did not specify purpose of his trip. I thought he was one of many people who pass by and offered him a place to stay. I also tried to introduce him to other people in Ljubljana and Zagreb so he would have someone to hang out and sleep over. In Ljubljana I introduced him to Vuk and in Zagreb I tried to introduce him to members of my sports club.
While he was here he never mentioned that he will write about me. He said he works as a translator from Russian to English and that he recently got interested in art writing. It is only during the last day that I realized he actually is a professional writer.
I welcomed him as much as I could, I was open, direct and honest. He was my and my family guest for several days. I was happy to host him and there is no problem whatsoever during this period.
Days later I received an email that there is an article about me on Rhizome.org by Brian. At first glance I emailed him: Nice article. I did not read it, I just sort of wanted to say thanks. I was surprised he wrote at all. I also do not follow Rhizome.org so I am not up to date with what is going on there.
Next day I read the article and was amazed how badly and falsely it is written. Article also featured some stuff I told him in a chat, not secret if it is over a coffee between people but not really something that should be published.
I got very angry and requested from Brian that he takes it off or edits it. He refused. He insisted to speak about his own feelings although I explained clearly the article is damaging and insulting and that every minute it is online it is causing me harm.
In some distant hope I started to post comments on Rhizome.org. I also emailed Rhizome.org staff. They requested a list of changes. I sent a very substantial list which arguments every single error in the article. Laurent wanted to negotiate over the phone but I insisted there is nothing to negotiate - I want the changes made. Their next move was to post a comment which presents me as if I delayed to send errors and as if my list of arguments is not realistic. Fact is that some errors even have contradict geography.
Lauren also requested that others confirm my claims and numerous individuals backed up by claims publicly and directly to Rhizome.org staff. I did not want to bother people with this issue but I am surely able to provide an almost unlimited listed of people who will back up my claims. We can start with my elementary school geography teacher.
I still do not understand why is it so hard to edit a single article and why Brian Droitcour and Rhizome.org staff consistently insisted not to make changes. The purpose of their stubbornness escapes me completely.
If the chance arises I will pursue this legally. In the mean time I produced a website at BrianDroitcour.com which through artistic parody explains this particular problem but maybe in general problems with unprofessional journalism and publishing.
My reactions
I am aware of the quality of my reactions. I am stupid but not that stupid. I know what I say and how it affects people. I can only say that, in my opinion, I have reacted very mildly. I have had someone as a guest, in my home, someone I spoke to openly, totally betray my trust. I have just met Brian but I think I have deserved the right to at least to see and comment on his writing before it was published. He has disrespected me and therefore hurt me. I react the way I only can, with anger, and I think it is justified. I am a person and not a machine to answer such things politely and look the other way. Any time someone treats me like this I will make sure they understand that this is not a way to treat other people. If not for than in hope they think twice before they do it again to someone else.
I am sorry people were bothered by emails from Rhizome.org. I was not aware of this but also this is a website problem and I can not allow it to restrict my expression. Also if you are bothered by emails, imagine how much bothered I am by this article. Multiply by million and you are close.
Problems with the article
Brian and Lauren insisted that I provide a list of factual errors. There are numerous factual errors but the problem itself is in the overall attitude of the article and the method information is obtained. However here are factual errors:
“who specializes in posters and spare prose pieces” - I do not specialize in posters and spare prose pieces. This is nonsense. Posters are at most 5\% of my work and I have not done one in years.
“in a gesture of Balkan hospitality” - Many do not realize that this is extremely racist. My hospitality has nothing to do with geopolitical classification, my nationality nor anything else. I am brought up in this way by my mom and dad. That’s it. I would like to see Rhizome.org write about African American artists in such a way. Only because you are not familiar with a negative stereotype (yet!) does not mean it is not wrong to use it nor that it is insulting. And btw I grew up in Africa, spent 1/3 of my life there, lived shortly in USA and almost 5 years in Italy. Brian met me in Belgrade which is located in Balkan peninsula - how that translates in this idiotic stereotype I do not know. I am hospitable because I am like this. If a Jew counts money he does not do it because he is a Jew but because he is financially responsible, if an African American likes chicken he does not like it because his grand grand grand parents were slaves but because he just likes it.
“Tosic lives on the outskirts of Belgrade” - and Manhattan is on the outskirts of New York City.
“but keeps his distance from the local scene” - based on what did Brian conclude this, since he has no idea about the scene nor me. However this could be damaging to my local relationships especially at this moment. In several projects I need to maintain political positions and if a journalist positions me as a marginal outsider this is definitely not good representation. This is not fair.
‘His artworks, which he tosses off” - I spend years producing some works!
“when he’s not working as a designer” - I am not a designer. I do design sometimes but hardly ever charge for it. I work as a consultant and I own my own business. Design can sometimes be part of my service but I have not been defined as a designer since 1999. I also washed a car once - this does not make me a car washer. I made some food for clients few times - this does not mean I am a cook. I think since my LinkedIN and my websites have no hints of me being a designer or contain any portfolios (maybe I should make one now) I am confused how did Brian conclude this is my profession. Confusing as well to my own clients to whom I charge extra to hire designers for them.
“deliberately marginal” - I would like to see how he concludes this? Marginal in reference to what? To Peter Jackson movies? Deliberately? I wish! In any case this has nothing to do with me and is not a fact.
“Meet in a Nice Restaurant, a networking-as-art gathering” - this project is not art. It is just a project. Not everything I do is art. I actually produce very little art projects. I made only few in my life so far. I do not like that everything I do is considered art, I am very clear on what is and what is not art. If certain projects are labeled by art people whom I involve in these projects might not take them seriously. So this is not true and is damaging. It is hard to understand for someone who is not in my position why some things are so damaging. Please understand that I work in consulting and in sports. These are different environments with completely different attitudes from internet art communities.
“His current pet project is Triathlon Team, which involves hosting and designing blogs for his favorite triathletes. The idea of designating a team for a purely solitary sport, and trying to make humble triathletes the subject of media attention, has the same dry, barely-there humor as his cartoonish pieces.” - it is true that my company has produced a project Triathlon Team. I do not host their blogs and this is a minor problem, but still a problem since we are looking for a host sponsor, but bigger problem is that this project is mentioned in an art related article. I fail to see any important that my company sports project is related to my art persona. Maybe Andy Warhol invested in a local laundry shop but I do not see that in his art biography.
“Nikola Tosic, sticker for Internet Pavilion” - Project is called Educational Sticker and this is again a project of my company, not my art project, but since, by my error, it was in Rhizome.org Artbase this is my problem. I have forgotten to take it out since I put it there many years ago. Miltos and several others do think of this as an art project but it is not. It is a viral I made to promote my business. Same as Personality Stereotypes. People may and should enjoy these projects but they are not art projects of Nikola Tosic, but projects of my company. If someone buys my company they will own these projects as well. I give them away in business meetings as corporate gifts. Nice ones! But not art.
“Kosmoplovci and Tosic, though their paths haven’t crossed in years and they have never collaborated.” - We have collaborated. They were partners and guests at the njumedija festival in 2002. It was featured on Rhizome.org and Brian saw a poster on my wall.
“the absence of an institutional peer network” - Brian did not seem one bit interested in doing proper research. I fail to see how he could conclude this during his few days here when we spent going to the beach, cinema and eating out. One day he visited Novi Sad and people he wanted to meet were not there so he spoke to someone else. His visit was disorganized and unmethodical, based on chit chats and gossip. It would be fine if he would not write in such a way as if he made the greatest discovery of the century.
“has an effect on their choices” - This is beyond comment how annoying it is! I see no point for my art to be related to these and this does not affect me in any way. I am just not interested. I was not interested in Africa, in Italy nor in Serbia. It is not my style. For some people it is good, for me not. It has no affect on my choices. I choose to do what I do because I want it that way.
“no one is telling them they shouldn’t make art about triathlons” - I mean this is just crazy! What art about triathlons? This is pure fiction.
There are plenty of other issues which are not related to me but others should deal with that. I am focusing only on my own problems now.
Geographical classification of internet art
Why did Brian and Rhizome.org decide on this bizarre geographical classification of internet and digital art? My first impression is that there was a grant for it. From one side it is good that someone takes an interest in anything, but on the other I fail to see the importance of location for internet, or any art apart form something from 500 years ago or like naïve art. Brian obviously wants to specialize in these areas and make a niche for himself, or something like that. Which is fine. If it is easy money for him why not. It is stupid but who I am to be against it.
What annoys me is the tone of writing - Brian constantly pretends he knows something and makes big statements and enforces some of the worst stereotypes - yes he did not give me an impression he cares to even spend five minutes on research. I immediately told him he was interested in projects from ten years ago and was amazed he did not find anything more recent. I mentioned some people but he did not insist on me finding contacts. In general he seemed to have decided long ahead what he will write and he just needed some stuff to fill few blanks.
He and Rhizome.org are trying to position themselves as experts yet they do not invest necessary time and work to do so. As I emailed Rhizome.org staff, there are people who take years to study certain elements of art from here or anywhere. Sometimes I am part of their academic or media research and we meet, they record what I say and let me check it if all is in order. These people obviously know a lot and are very dedicated. I always respected them.
Brian is contradiction to them. He is superficial in his observation and seems more interested in quick putting out copy than actually taking time to study his subject. I do not think this is how it should be. These mistakes could have been easily avoided. But were not…
What if?
If Brian only emailed me the article before he published it, it would have taken me 5 mins to send him corrections. He had my phone number, I had his. Why he refused to skip this step I do not know.
Also Rhizome.org could have easily made above changes. They say that I insisted on deletion of the article - I insisted on my name being taken out because every single mention of my name, except one sentence, is false. Also I insisted because of disrespect from Brian’s side. I feel I am being bullied by him through this article and I would rather someone hits me with a car than that someone writes this nonsense about me.
If Brian did not use such a sure arrogant tone and such unnecessary strong statements the article would probably turn out acceptable. Problem is he tries very hard to sound like Fidel Castro giving a revolutionary speech while he hardly did any research to back it up. He had an idea how he wants his article to sound and he fabricated the characters and the stories to fit in, to make it interesting and give himself some points.
This can impress people who do not really know.
I do not know anything about shows in New York City so when I read an article about it I believe it. I do not know if Michael Jackson is a pedophile so I might believe what the media says. If I knew Michael Jackson I would maybe realize how false the articles are.
You, the readers, do not know me nor this place, so you think this is a matter of interpretation. It is not. The method is wrong so even if the facts were right this article is unethical. He was a guest and he abused that. I said many things in front of him and now I have to worry if he will keep on publishing this for next decade or so. The facts are wrong. The impression the article gives is completely wrong and unfair.
Lack of apology
Brian and Rhizome.org offered me resistance in every step. No hint of understanding, no apology.
Not at any point has anyone apologized for Brian’s methods.
He works for Rhizome.org, he presents himself as Rhizome.org employee, Rhizome.org published his works and defends his works.
All this time I got no ethical satisfaction from anyone at Rhizome.org. Their cold distance and arrogance and stubbornness is frustrating.
Lawsuit
Lawyer who works for us is not specialized in this kind of work especially not in USA conditions. If I get a chance to speak to a lawyer whom I can trust and who can offer me solid advice on this matter, and if that advice is to sue, I will proceed. Obviously this is likely not to happen, but then again, who knows.
Why would anyone sue a non profit arts organization?
Because they did something wrong and unethical and they do not admit their error. Rhizome.org is after all a small website and a community. I am guessing it struggles especially in today’s financial atmosphere.
But Rhizome.org is here to document the history and support the creation of art. This is it’s ultimate mission. And in this case the mission fails. There is no documentation of history, the article is as bad as yellow press. It distorts the history. Creates distrust in their ability to present the art to present and future public. It is filled with false information, negative stereotypes and wrong conclusions.
So maybe, now in my arrogance, I can imagine that this whole business inspires Rhizome.org staff to respect the process of promotion, documentation and support of art a bit more seriously. After all I am sure they have a lot to learn especially from more brick & mortat art organizations and an ever changing community.
Also… there are plenty of people who are not friends of Rhizome.org staff but who have their lives, their work, their art, and I think Rhizome.org needs to respect them as well. I do not want to be friends with Rhizome.org staff, I do not want to mingle in New York City and online to be respected. I do not want to have to meet for coffee and impress people so they understand my work. This is blackmail.
Institutions like this, writers like Brian, should respect me by default. Not because I am special, but just because I am. I wake up, I go to the bathroom, I eat, I work to make some money, I make some art sometimes, I think about art, I see a movie, I enjoy nature and good food… Like everybody else.
Rhizome.org should have given me a chance in this whole business but they never did.
In my book Brian Droitcour and Rhizome.org are not fair.
For more info contact me on email nikolatosic at gmail.com or skype nikolatosic.com.