Cory Arcangel: "In collaboration with Galerie Lisa Ruyter and the museum in progress, I have placed a horizontal rule of gif smilies onto the Wein & Co building in Vienna..."
From the museum in progress website: "Cory Arcangel's stripe is based on 'horizontal rules,' horizontal lines of images which were common for early webpage designers to divide their webpages horizontally."
That's the front story and the back story. How many people walking down the street in Vienna will recognize that line of smileys as kitsch from the early vernacular web, to use Olia Lialina's phrase? I don't care--I like the utter banality of this piece whatever the viewer gets from it. I'm guessing it's invisible to the passerby, and there's something really beautiful about that. On the other hand, maybe it has a slightly alien quality that makes it pop (that's a verb) out there on the street. That's the curse of reacting to work from secondhand sources: we just don't know.
Update: For the Lisa Ruyter referred to in this post see Francis Ruyter.
I'm adding this here rather than the main post:
To further speculate, as to what's outside the frame of the above photo: The degree to which the piece is attention-getting might depend on how upscale the neighborhood is. You might not look twice at that line of smileys in Brooklyn street mall, or in the West End in Munich, but if Wein & Co is on a fancy block this would be more of a "statement." Anyone know?
I was thinking it might parallel the kitschy old-world architecture, but as you say "second-hand source". And why on a wine merchants building?
This is pretty sweet. I think most of vienna (wien) would make for an interesting spot for this line... I imagine it is in the center city (ring) and near the contemporary art museum, or secessionist gallery. Vienna is dope. the project they did with NikePlatz was great.
The question I guess I'm asking is, does it look like art where it is (i.e., visible, noteworthy) or typical street level kitsch signage (banal, invisible without the back story). It's even more likely to have the former read in an "art neighborhood." A third possibility is, could it be read as a faux-subversive commercial ad campaign for something (which could happen in any location but is more likely to be where consumers are).
To me the pixelation or jaggy edges is the main give-away to the source, so I'm sure that would work for the general public. (but a good point about faux subversive add campaigns, don't know the answer to that, they've made us suspicious of every mysterious street image)
I like applying the non-site idea to it. But it in some ways seems to work in reverse. It is certainly abstracted removed from it's source; context seems to be ruling the way this sort of thing is read, but there may be no need. Regardless of the surrounding area we could just read it as Net content put into the lifeworld disguised as formal abstraction.
My understanding of non-sites was they were works in the gallery--objects/abstractions that symbolized an absent place. This is a plain old site specific work--an art intervention in the (urban) landscape. With an internet connection.
I'm still riffing on the brief exchange we had regarding what you coined "digital non-sites". The conversation Smithson may have been addressing, lifeworld/gallery world, might (and I stress MIGHT) not be as relevant today. Whereas virtual world/lifeworld is a dichotomy I find much more interesting. Heck, Spiral Jetty was site specific.
That's what I'm talking about. In that earlier exchange, I was applying Smithson's term non-site, which applied to work in a gallery with a reference to a physical site outside the gallery, to work in a gallery that had a digital or internet reference. Hence, "digital non-sites."
Cory's piece isn't a digital non-site--Smithson's term wouldn't be applicable here.
Unless Galerie Lisa Ruyter exhibited photodocumentation or some other physical token of the "Vienna Horizontal Rule"--that would be both a non-site (referring to the location in Vienna) and a digital non-site (referring to the Internet--specifically Cory's web publication of the piece and the link to "horizontal rules" on that "bellsandwhistles" page).
You might find the "virtual world vs the real world" discussion more interesting, but the "digital non-sites" issue came up because we were talking about my show and Michael Bell-Smith's show, which were in art galleries.
Cory also shows in galleries, so some of the discussion might pertain to him. Just not with this outdoor piece, I think.
We are dealing with the language of galleries here because they are still an arbiter of value for visual art, and they aren't going away. My terminology is an attempt to meet them halfway.
Applying the terms to the virtual world--"is MySpace a place?", all that--is more in the nature of an intramural discussion within New Media. That's just puffs of smoke to the gallery crowd, which has its own lingo and concerns.
Yeah, Tom, I gotcha. I'm just twisting it, mashing it up, and seeing what ideas it pulls along. I'm not applying a name, just using the concept as a starting point and relating it to a contemporaneous discourse. Personally, I'm not so hung up on the gallery angle, while it may be correct. (I would like to point out that in the Provisional Theory of Non-Sites there is no mention of gallery space, though we may have understood it to be a qualitative condition, it is also understood that Smithson was addressing site, displacement and location both literally and allegorically. Can we see the same issues in Arcangel's Horizontal Rule? I think so.)
Sure, I would like to just point at Cory's weblog and the object installation and say "there you go", but then where is all the stifling baggage brought by the context of a gallery? Is it to be found by tying on the economic and cultural factors of the surrounding neighborhood?
it seems like the context here is a known spot; this is not some random tag that showed up one morning, but a spot that people know as a art site since 1999 (their website states).. which already makes it more of a gallery (institutionalized) setting
I love the slippery subject of 'where' this art happens...
Thanks for posting it Tom.
I think it might be a lot less slippery if we knew some basic facts. Thanks for looking at the website, that's more than I did.
And since Smithson has been quoted to us...
From that same essay: "The Non-Site (an indoor earthwork) is a three dimensional logical picture that is abstract, yet it represents an actual site in N.J. (The Pine Barrens Plains)." "Indoor." This piece. Sounds like we're talking about...the gallery. You could apply the term "non-site" to an outdoor, urban artwork...if you wanted to change Smithson's meaning.
I'm not applying the term, or the "meaning" - just the schematic. Then looking to see if I can find similarities in how these works function. I don't know Smithson's meaning, but I do understand that he was addressing the indoor/outdoor dialectic, site/displacement/location, and the relationship of the signifier to the signified. As I am not able to stand in front of Horizontal Rule, those theoretical issues are the only thing I can find of interest in this particular work. Without them the best I can do is shrug.
As for the quote, I thought he was attempting to illustrate the abstracting effect culture has over nature. If that is the case then a gallery is convienent as it is an arbiter of culture, but one could certainly argue that it is not necessarily intrinsic to the realization of a non-site, just as you have proposed an actual physical site is not necessary. However, this may be a conversation for another place and time, and I doubt I could hold my own in an argument with anyone regarding the writings of Robert Smithson.
I come back to your first question (you might not look twice at that line of smileys in Brooklyn street mall, or in the West End in Munich, but if Wein & Co is on a fancy block this would be more of a "statement." ). Interesting question, and I agree, smileys are just normal in the Brooklyn environment, but would make a statement if contrasting a clean, homogenous environment.
i thought they looked as though transplanted from a tokyo streetscape.
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Cory Arcangel: "In collaboration with Galerie Lisa Ruyter and the museum in progress, I have placed a horizontal rule of gif smilies onto the Wein & Co building in Vienna..."
From the museum in progress website: "Cory Arcangel's stripe is based on 'horizontal rules,' horizontal lines of images which were common for early webpage designers to divide their webpages horizontally."
That's the front story and the back story. How many people walking down the street in Vienna will recognize that line of smileys as kitsch from the early vernacular web, to use Olia Lialina's phrase? I don't care--I like the utter banality of this piece whatever the viewer gets from it. I'm guessing it's invisible to the passerby, and there's something really beautiful about that. On the other hand, maybe it has a slightly alien quality that makes it pop (that's a verb) out there on the street. That's the curse of reacting to work from secondhand sources: we just don't know.
Update: For the Lisa Ruyter referred to in this post see Francis Ruyter.
- tom moody 6-19-2006 8:53 pm
I'm adding this here rather than the main post:
To further speculate, as to what's outside the frame of the above photo: The degree to which the piece is attention-getting might depend on how upscale the neighborhood is. You might not look twice at that line of smileys in Brooklyn street mall, or in the West End in Munich, but if Wein & Co is on a fancy block this would be more of a "statement." Anyone know?
- tom moody 6-19-2006 9:13 pm
I was thinking it might parallel the kitschy old-world architecture, but as you say "second-hand source". And why on a wine merchants building?
- Robert Huffmann (guest) 6-19-2006 10:22 pm
This is pretty sweet. I think most of vienna (wien) would make for an interesting spot for this line... I imagine it is in the center city (ring) and near the contemporary art museum, or secessionist gallery. Vienna is dope. the project they did with NikePlatz was great.
- clayton (guest) 6-19-2006 10:31 pm
The question I guess I'm asking is, does it look like art where it is (i.e., visible, noteworthy) or typical street level kitsch signage (banal, invisible without the back story). It's even more likely to have the former read in an "art neighborhood." A third possibility is, could it be read as a faux-subversive commercial ad campaign for something (which could happen in any location but is more likely to be where consumers are).
- tom moody 6-19-2006 11:33 pm
To me the pixelation or jaggy edges is the main give-away to the source, so I'm sure that would work for the general public. (but a good point about faux subversive add campaigns, don't know the answer to that, they've made us suspicious of every mysterious street image)
- L.M. 6-20-2006 12:37 am
I like applying the non-site idea to it. But it in some ways seems to work in reverse. It is certainly abstracted removed from it's source; context seems to be ruling the way this sort of thing is read, but there may be no need. Regardless of the surrounding area we could just read it as Net content put into the lifeworld disguised as formal abstraction.
- Robert Huffmann (guest) 6-20-2006 2:03 am
My understanding of non-sites was they were works in the gallery--objects/abstractions that symbolized an absent place. This is a plain old site specific work--an art intervention in the (urban) landscape. With an internet connection.
- tom moody 6-20-2006 2:10 am
I'm still riffing on the brief exchange we had regarding what you coined "digital non-sites". The conversation Smithson may have been addressing, lifeworld/gallery world, might (and I stress MIGHT) not be as relevant today. Whereas virtual world/lifeworld is a dichotomy I find much more interesting. Heck, Spiral Jetty was site specific.
- Robert Huffmann (guest) 6-20-2006 3:26 am
That's what I'm talking about. In that earlier exchange, I was applying Smithson's term non-site, which applied to work in a gallery with a reference to a physical site outside the gallery, to work in a gallery that had a digital or internet reference. Hence, "digital non-sites."
Cory's piece isn't a digital non-site--Smithson's term wouldn't be applicable here.
Unless Galerie Lisa Ruyter exhibited photodocumentation or some other physical token of the "Vienna Horizontal Rule"--that would be both a non-site (referring to the location in Vienna) and a digital non-site (referring to the Internet--specifically Cory's web publication of the piece and the link to "horizontal rules" on that "bellsandwhistles" page).
- tom moody 6-20-2006 3:56 am
You might find the "virtual world vs the real world" discussion more interesting, but the "digital non-sites" issue came up because we were talking about my show and Michael Bell-Smith's show, which were in art galleries.
Cory also shows in galleries, so some of the discussion might pertain to him. Just not with this outdoor piece, I think.
We are dealing with the language of galleries here because they are still an arbiter of value for visual art, and they aren't going away. My terminology is an attempt to meet them halfway.
Applying the terms to the virtual world--"is MySpace a place?", all that--is more in the nature of an intramural discussion within New Media. That's just puffs of smoke to the gallery crowd, which has its own lingo and concerns.
- tom moody 6-20-2006 4:31 am
Yeah, Tom, I gotcha. I'm just twisting it, mashing it up, and seeing what ideas it pulls along. I'm not applying a name, just using the concept as a starting point and relating it to a contemporaneous discourse. Personally, I'm not so hung up on the gallery angle, while it may be correct. (I would like to point out that in the Provisional Theory of Non-Sites there is no mention of gallery space, though we may have understood it to be a qualitative condition, it is also understood that Smithson was addressing site, displacement and location both literally and allegorically. Can we see the same issues in Arcangel's Horizontal Rule? I think so.)
Sure, I would like to just point at Cory's weblog and the object installation and say "there you go", but then where is all the stifling baggage brought by the context of a gallery? Is it to be found by tying on the economic and cultural factors of the surrounding neighborhood?
- Robert Huffmann (guest) 6-20-2006 6:00 am
it seems like the context here is a known spot; this is not some random tag that showed up one morning, but a spot that people know as a art site since 1999 (their website states).. which already makes it more of a gallery (institutionalized) setting
I love the slippery subject of 'where' this art happens...
Thanks for posting it Tom.
- clayton (guest) 6-20-2006 7:19 am
I think it might be a lot less slippery if we knew some basic facts. Thanks for looking at the website, that's more than I did.
- tom moody 6-20-2006 8:18 am
And since Smithson has been quoted to us...
"Indoor." This piece. Sounds like we're talking about...the gallery. You could apply the term "non-site" to an outdoor, urban artwork...if you wanted to change Smithson's meaning.From that same essay:
- tom moody 6-20-2006 12:22 pm
I'm not applying the term, or the "meaning" - just the schematic. Then looking to see if I can find similarities in how these works function. I don't know Smithson's meaning, but I do understand that he was addressing the indoor/outdoor dialectic, site/displacement/location, and the relationship of the signifier to the signified. As I am not able to stand in front of Horizontal Rule, those theoretical issues are the only thing I can find of interest in this particular work. Without them the best I can do is shrug.
As for the quote, I thought he was attempting to illustrate the abstracting effect culture has over nature. If that is the case then a gallery is convienent as it is an arbiter of culture, but one could certainly argue that it is not necessarily intrinsic to the realization of a non-site, just as you have proposed an actual physical site is not necessary. However, this may be a conversation for another place and time, and I doubt I could hold my own in an argument with anyone regarding the writings of Robert Smithson.
- Robert Huffmann (guest) 6-20-2006 7:20 pm
I come back to your first question (you might not look twice at that line of smileys in Brooklyn street mall, or in the West End in Munich, but if Wein & Co is on a fancy block this would be more of a "statement." ). Interesting question, and I agree, smileys are just normal in the Brooklyn environment, but would make a statement if contrasting a clean, homogenous environment.
- stst (guest) 6-20-2006 7:37 pm
i thought they looked as though transplanted from a tokyo streetscape.
- bill 6-20-2006 9:30 pm