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Still More Damn Metablogging
Just reading a New York Times article (linked to by Bill) that talks about how blogs are changing the design world because bloggers write from passion and editors and other trendspotters increasingly rely on them to suss out the new.* This hasn't happened in the art world, because galleries still don't know what blogs are. (Print magazines are figuring it out and thanks again to AinA.) One of the themes of the Rhizome "Blogging and the Arts" panel in Nov. at the New Museum was whether this thickheadedness on the part of art spaces was volitional. Most of the audience for that panel, I'd guess, came from the new media community, comprising folks making computer, internet, video, and multimedia art that is exciting and increasingly relevant as the world becomes more wired, but hard to commodify in the same way that galleries package and sell non-virtual artists.
Many in this cyber-community think the internet's openness and transparency threatens the gallery's traditional business of "creating the appearance of rarity or scarcity of objects in order to market them for high prices to an elite," as someone said that night. Yet at the same time the new media-ers ultimately want that gallery sanction--for the art world to say that what they do is not only art, but great art. My own response is there is no conspiracy, that the gallery world has certain habits of practice, which up till a few years ago included putting up shows, mailing out invitations, getting critics in, xeroxing the critics' clippings and mailing them to collectors, etc. but now includes dealing with the baffling and ever-changing world of websites and like it or not, blogs. Most overworked, underpaid gallery worker ants don't have the time, money, or energy to deal with this layer.
Having said all that, it's annoying that galleries don't acknowledge blog writing and still privilege King Print. I admit I only recently added blog references and hyperlinks to my personal resume, and it's going to be a pain to keep track of them as URLs change or heaven forbid disappear. But I think it's an important step. From the galleries' perspective, legitimation or verification of artists ought to be a two way street, or packet exchange or whatever: they rely on known critics to build the case for work, but they also endorse lesser-known critics by including them in their artists' clipping files. If an up-and-coming critic says something perceptive about a show that the mainstream media mavens missed, the gallery helps spread the word that that writer has a clue by listing their writing on the bio. Thus begins a cycle of mutual critical reinforcement, what the cynical might call a circle jerk, but nevertheless potentially scene-defining.
*The article goes on to talk about how manufacturers corrupt this process by giving bloggers freebies in exchange for plugs, but the art world isn't even to stage one of bloggers mattering yet.
The cool people: the following U.S. Senators voted against the appointment of Condi "Mushroom Cloud" Rice, who is now the Secretary of State:
James Jeffords, Independent, of Vermont, and Democrats Mark Dayton of Minnesota, Barbara Boxer of California, Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts, Carl Levin of Michigan, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Tom Harkin of Iowa.These people know a liar when they see one, as do we, the hapless public.
This page joins in solidarity with all the others who oppose the Senate confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the U.S. The memo he wrote approving the torture of U.S. military prisoners will eventually earn him a place in one of those netherworld resorts Dante excelled at describing, but in the meantime, let's do what we can to keep him out of high office. One thing I wonder is, why don't any mainstream, non-Fundamentalist churches (Episcopalians, Lutherans, etc.) speak out in protest that sexual humiliation, immersion in buckets of water, and other Inquisition-like horrors to elicit "information" has become the official policy of the U.S.? Were Jesus' teachings just about making people feel mellow? War or no war, this is bad for all of us.
As for the other evil shoo-in, James Wolcott has this to say:
Why is Barbara Boxer out there all alone asking the tough questions about Condi Rice's snail trail of deceit and fearmongering? She has the audacity to act as if the Senate actually has some traditional advise-and-consent role to play and for her pains is caricatured as a shrieking harridan on Saturday Night Live and a witch on talk radio. Boxer was terrific today on CNN, refusing to back down and reiterating her questions and objections regarding Rice with emphatic clarity while Sen Lugar mumble-mumbled some pathetic excuse-making about how Rice didn't deliberately mislead the country re Iraq's WMDs, she just did the best she could under the circumstances. Look, Biden and the rest of you Democratic punk-asses--get behind Boxer or get lost. She shouldn't be up there on the parapet alone, not with this wrecking crew trying to gear us up for war on Iran.
"Jay Jay's Apartment" (cool version) [mp3 removed]
"Jay Jay's Apartment" (nerdy version) [mp3 removed]
"The demon has materialized over Tokyo Bay!"
"Use the gamma beam--now!"
"It's not stopping--it seems to be eating the gamma radiation."
"We'll have to lure it back into the wormhole, using the gamma cannon as a decoy--move the ship into position, and on my signal..."
Great post from collision detection, re-re-blogged from Eyebeam:
Apparently Glad has scored a bit hit with its new ForceFlex garbage bags -- which can stretch to seemingly impossible dimensions, and thus contain the ever-greater volumes of nonrecyclable carcinogens the average American family craps out every day. ("Hey honey, Johnny doesn't like his Jungle Gym anymore!" "No problem, sweetie -- we'll just shove it inside a single ForceFlex garbage bag and send it off to the dump so Johnny's grandchildren can drink the entire goddamn thing 80 years from now when it leaches into the water table.")
Regarding the '90s pieces I just posted, Paul asks if x-eleven, the old school Dallas techno outfit that recently put its entire catalog up on the Net, got me inspired to go through my older work. The answer is not directly, I usually put up older things when I stumble across them looking for something else and they jibe with whatever I'm thinking about now, or possibly because they have nothing to do with that. I consider any painted pieces to be hopelessly retrograde and superseded and if I post them it's because I'm, well, let's just say proud of them for the time I made them.
A show recently opened in Brooklyn called "Decipher: Hand Painted Digital" that my work was considered for and...I don't know if rejected is the right word because the curator said all the artists had to live or have studios in Brooklyn. Oy. He added that subheading "hand painted digital" after the time of our discussions and I gotta say it's a bit unfair to the artists in the show who abandoned the security blanket of paint to paint in a new medium. Many of the included painters do use the computer in one or more steps of their work--to generate imagery, photo-process, possibly check out color combinations, I don't know--but there's nothing particularly "cyber" on the face of it. At its worst, "hand painted digital" suggests a painter trying to stay current or "hep" by painting digital, or digital-looking imagery, in his or her old style.
Back to x-eleven: I consider it to be J. S. Bach, not a period piece, though some of the technology and much of the motivation (make cool music for a rave, expand minds, get out of Arlington, TX) no longer exists per se. I'm just amazed by how complex and intense it is, and I suppose I mentally subtract out anything cheesy or dated. I do that with a lot of prog rock as well.