Tom Moody

tom moody

Thanks to ArtCal for the nice advance listing on the "Blog" opening tonight. I will be there and plan to do some "live posting." As explained in this earlier thread on the methodology of the piece:

I see this performance as a lot like the cubicle group show I was in, where I sat in the cube and worked at the computer in my business casual attire: on the opening night, but also during "office hours"--in other words, every day the space was open I came in and worked. The unrented office where that show was held had no net connection and I was channeling "my working conditions circa '95" so I posted about it during non office hours. For BLOG I will also be working during gallery hours, but from home--the posting will be the work, not about the work. (Or both, if I'm feeling "meta.")

[...]

I'm going to be performing with changing content, graphics, etc. Not really any different from what I normally do but with an awareness of a specific, physical audience, what will work on the gallery's screen, how to explain to a reader not physically in the gallery what I'm doing and why.

Also I will post any documentation the gallery sends me of how the blog screen appeared on a given day, whether or not anyone looked at it, etc. The gallery will also save each day's posts as documentation.

As for the "how do you sell this?" question:

[T]his'll be structured as a "classic" economic exchange. An agreed amount of funds for an editioned disc with the data for the show (html files for each day's posts plus associated files--images, etc.) and a certificate authenticating the work and the size of the edition.

Also, besides the edition, the "terminal" (pedestal/keyboard stand, gear) will be offered as a stand alone work, with the month's posts and associated files burned on a dedicated hard drive.

As for the press release's statement, "For the first time a blog is shown in a gallery space," commenters in the thread mentioned some possible precedents but no serious documentation was put forward of a previous, month long performance work called "Blog." As stated in the thread, I'm open to having a "beef" with anyone on this issue. On some level mine is a protest piece: that blogging has made no serious inroads into the rigid gallery/museum/art mag system of evaluating art and must be physically present in a gallery to have "cred." But it is also the second generation of "net art"--a much more casual and un-self conscious use of available technology as a content delivery system. It may seem paradoxical to say a blog bearing the artist's name is un-self conscious but the scope of this blog has always been bigger than talking about my cat (if I had one). Commenters keep the place lively and interesting, for me and I think others.

"BLOG," the gallery exhibition, opens tomorrow night in the artMovingProjects project space. Above, artist Aron Namenwirth gives the artwork a test drive. What we have is a dedicated, frequently updated, remote content delivery system in the gallery, clearly visible in the space, which is as interactive as the viewer wants it to be. Using a feature called "comments," one can communicate directly with the artist. The future arrived early.

(Images on screen are by Ina Barfuss, culled from Google as a hybrid activity of appropriation, curation, and journalism.)

The subject came up: Who is a female German artist that is a contemporary of Baselitz, Penck, Immendorf, etc. In other words, a hardcore neo-expressionist, not an ironic conceptualist. I suggested Ina Barfuss. Here are some images of hers pulled off of Google images. Some nice things here, I think! Especially that blue one, whoah!
ina barfuss 1

So far Mike Gravel on the Democratic side and Ron Paul on the Republican side lead all the candidates in willingness to speak truth instead of poll-tested BS. Watch this YouTube of Paul responding logically and articulately to Rudolph Giuliani's thuggish questioning of his patriotism. Wolf Blitzer, reinforcing the status quo as always, seems to have a hard time wrapping his head around the concept of "blowback."

Good Art of the Day

Joel Holmberg: Scratching Post Vortex and rear-screen-projected sculpture/installation based on same.

From Time Out New York's Art Listings this week: "Tom Moody, 'BLOG.' Moody's art, music and animations are accessible through a computer terminal; viewers are invited to post comments. artMovingProjects, Brooklyn, Project Space, Sat 19-June 24." (online version) Hope all can come to the opening Saturday. I will be present and will post from the gallery. (more details)

Photo of the "terminal": artMovingProjects

Samurai Quotes from Ghost Dog.

From the Vault: Ghost Dog review(s) and license plate screen shots. (Some serious link rot rectified!)

Completely off topic, but essential: the last 10 or so seconds of every episode of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, assembled by Paul Slocum (Caution: Wesley Crusher in oversized natural fabric (?) top)

A couple of threads on art and religion over at Sally McKay's and L.M.'s blog: here and here. Seems it started with a panel with some art critics saying really stupid stuff like

"A -"We [secularist intellectuals] are very much the white settlers in the fort, completely surrounded ...by the raging hordes of the spiritual outside."

B- "That's precisely the point. Well put. That is exactly what's behind the anxiety...about all this religion stuff and what does it have to do with the avant-garde, with contemporary art, real important art. There is an anxiety that we are indeed outnumbered. Jesse Helms attacked the NEA and had great success. We're under siege."

A-"But luckily we're the ones that write the textbooks."

...followed by some of McKay's/LM's commenters decrying the art world's hypocritical bias against current religious art when it is only too happy to talk about past religious motivation (Kandinsky, etc.) To David Morgan's question "why do art historians studying art before the modern era give attention to religion, but those writing on fine art since the 19th century often very confidently consider religion irrelevant, even improper to examine?" I responded (cramming together several answers):

How about: Because art before the modern era is safely in the past, its practitioners long dead, and religion's contribution can be approached analytically without getting some living religious person's knickers in a twist. It's not that religion is irrelevant but let's just say certain zealots have made the topic literally lethal.

As an artist I'm fascinated by fringe religions because the idea of the deity seems to come from the same place as art ideas--as in, some murky, ecstatic place. I like to read and think about those religions but I don't necessarily want to meet these people. As for religions with more established dogma many of those practitioners are reading from a script. Either way, I hate it when someone tries to convert me because a lot of sleazy mind control tricks are used. The practitioner is looking for people who seem depressed and unhappy* because they're more subject to "love bombing" and all that other shite. Ugh. I'm proud to be from a country where the founders steered clear of the various mystery cults in creating our civic charter.

The art world's "bias" against religion isn't just reflex avant gardism. Empirical, Enlightenment principles of rational argument are also at stake. (One who questions whether the Earth really started 6000 years ago is in actual, physical danger today.) But I don't think contemporary art has any duty to defend such principles against the fanatic hordes--just to be aware that talking about current religion (critically or not) involves real risks so it's better to be guarded, or coded, or steer the f*ck clear of it.

(image above--possibly the greatest painting ever made--by jonathan borofsky)

*Or in my case because they mistake irony for misery. Thinking of one specific instance where I was sitting drawing a skeleton playing bongos and a woman saw it and tried to get me come to come to her megachurch on the freeway.

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