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[Nettime-bold] Peppermint's FAQ's on CN_0 for Whitney Artport August 2001


Subj:    G2000Conf2000 I'm going to have to crit this, anyone else in?
Date:   8/10/2001 7:08:46 AM Central Daylight Time
From:   nmherman@aol.com
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Subj:    <thingist> CN_ZERO | FAQ | FOR WHITNEY ARTPORT
Date:   8/9/2001 10:45:39 PM Central Daylight Time
From:   mint77@restlessculture.net (infomix)
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CONDUCTOR NUMBER ZERO | FAQ | FOR WHITNEY ARTPORT 08.2001

----------

Q:What if no one bids for the CN_ZERO images via ebay.com?
(http://www.whitney.org/artport) Will this constitute some type of failure?
Will restlessculture still betray itself?
 
A:Maybe it will be a testament to faith in the gallery system as the
continued brokers of choice for art and taste.  Maybe it will just result in
the lack of pocket change for me thus confirming that restlessculture is
still a little shy of being handed over to pure profitability.  Thus far I
think it is interesting to consider these ebay.com auctions as sacrificial
rituals that "purify" restlessculture and insure its continued vitality and
movement,  i.e. life outside immediate and easy commodification.

[MH:  I don't really have any opinion on this FAQ, although it does seem to 
deal with the question of commodification, which question I don't think 
yields much if one's context is e.bay and the sale or non-sale of jpegs 
thereon.  My reaction to this FAQ is, "possible straw-man controversy?"]


Q:How do you expect to change anything using images like the following?
http://www.whitney.org/artport/artists/peppermint/images/cn0_img2.gif

A:My work functions as a  "web" or text of many divergent threads and links.  
[MH's comments in brackets henceforth--I think you could say the same of any 
art or activity, so I distrust this statement from the get-go.]
To isolate and attempt a reading of a singular [why not the word single?  
Nitpicking here] component of my work outside
the hyper-weave of context [This comment implies that one shouldn't take the 
image in question ought not be looked at as a single image, again a 
redundancy if every image is contextual already.  The answer suggests that 
CN_0 is special in this regard, and I find it additionally suspect that the 
admonition to "look at the hyper-weave of context, not the implications of 
the image" is brought up specifically to respond to the mention of "change".  
I think to myself, "Is the artist implying that change shouldn't be a 
criterion for artwork, or that change oughtn't be asked of single images 
within a hyper-weave ouvre?"  I also suspect that the mention of change is 
made not to renounce change per se but only certain definitions of it.  I 
don't see CN_0 as confronting this distinction however, rather dismissing 
it/glossing it over using an "uncertainty principle of the net".  I also 
suspect the mention of change to belie a lack of conviction in the piece 
regarding the novelty of its message and hence its merit; if the piece or the 
ouvre (hyper-weave) had a substantive valence regarding novelty as a 
criterion I'd be less critical but many factors suggest no substance in this 
aspect of the ouvre] (made possible by the net itself) [I find this 
disingenuous.  "Hyper-weave", "net itself", and the superficial treatment of 
commerce and novelty as net-only phenomena lead me to the conclusion that 
these FAQ's are little better than exercises in the art of the buzzword, 
unforgivable in art rising to the level of corporate sponsorship at the 
present state of history] is the only
real method one could employ toward completely mis-understanding my work.  
[I'm not sure if mis-understanding is in fact the desired effect; I have seen 
'mis-understanding used elsewhere to describe the best possible function of 
art and artistry.  I associate it in fact with Peppermint's ouvre and milieu, 
though I can't place the exact precedent from memory.  I don't think that the 
presenter of putatively cognition-enhancing images, under support of the 
large institution the Whitney, ought to need to address "misunderstanding" as 
a genuine concern.  Such a posture only serves to mystify the artist and the 
apprehension of individual genius--mere obfuscation--and if the posture is 
ironic, its development in the symphonic sense in the hyper-weave of CN_0 is 
of the nature of boilerplate only.  As one might deduce, my assessment of 
CN_0 is now very close to hostile, as I, Max Herman, do not regard shallow 
high-profile obfuscation as proper to the art of cognition-enhancing media 
activity.  This of course is only a preference on my part, but when combined 
with the awareness that mystification and grandiosity are the 
arch-characteristic of fascist, corrupt hierarchies of genius, and with with 
awareness that participating in the corporate-funded museum-artworld may in 
fact require an obedient nay slavish rejection of the Genius 2000 Network and 
its content much in the way that signed letters accepting the majesty of the 
Trinity were once requirements for porfessional artistic status, I conclude 
that CN_0's mystification and grandiosity are in fact symptoms of the piece, 
ouvre, and artist's complicity with the foetid said corporate-art-industry's 
offensive mandates]

I
do not work with the intention of changing anything.  [Given the 
preponderance of evidence that the claim of exemption from criteria of change 
derives mainly from Peppermint's association with the art-mafia of the USA, I 
find this personal testimony redolent of posturing.  It uses the language of 
intention most fatuously.  The statement very sloppily elides questions of 
intentionality--which are not the viewer's responsibility--by use of the 
first-person artist-voice.  Another case of Peppermint's work and voice not 
deserving one's time, if one values the ethos of Genius 2000, as I most 
certainly do.]

 My work is
creative-play.  [No need for a hypen here.  I do look for evidence of a 
hemorrhaging of the artist's terminology if the artist is defending his or 
her artwork in a specific context, here the context of the Whitney Artport 
August 2001.  I think Peppermint is taking refuge behind the cliche of 
jouissance in an attempt to remain loyal to academic art-theory of the 
present-day in the USA.  Having written inadequately thus far in his FAQ's on 
CN_0, I take Peppermint's gesture of allegiance to conventional academic 
wisdom to be slavish in origin, not to mention a despicable change of 
subject.]  

I do not expect any stark, obvious, or otherwise
"revolutionary" exchange for this work.  I am a radical, [then why such a 
dependence on conventional channels for the delivery of his webwork and the 
validation thereof?  Peppermint is increasingly whiny and ludicrous hereafter 
in these FAQ's] a cultural
transgressive, [I find this attribution offensive when an artist uses it 
toward him or herself.  It ought to be the user's characterization to make.  
The possibility of hyper-irony arises again; is Peppermint truly trying only 
to subvert the cliche of museum-supported transgression?  In which case, why 
does he wish not to accept a museum-free destiny for his work?  He may be 
occupied with the inculcation of transgressivity without form or specificity 
into to museum-led clique within art today.  One must judge for one's self 
whether Peppermint is genuinely trying to help museum's evolve beyond their 
corporate non-transgressivity or genuinely complicit with the museums' 
well-documented subservience to the art-mafia system and to corporate 
funding.]

[I am] an artist simply because I commit my life toward the gesture
of imagining anything other than what is prescribed for us through popular
western ideology.  

[This cannot, to a reasonably critical viewer, be anything more than 
bullshit.  Catch-phrases, old-fashioned romanticism of being an artist, 
obnoxiously indeterminate modes of gesture and glamorization thereof, a 
slavish and trendy concept of "prescription" that partakes quite blatantly of 
what Thomas Frank called "the conquest of cool", and a blathering mention of 
western ideology as bad while simultaneously incarnating its worst and lowest 
elements as regards the artistic persona, all in one sentence.  I will now 
switch over to my own opinions of CN_0 and its hyperweave, and Peppermint's 
seeming rationalization thereof.]

My work is to keep imagination alive through any network
into which I may gain access, e.g.  streets, galleries, institutions,
internet, video, etc. any platform for dissemination of art/information.  
[Peppermint uses an odd term here, "imagination", a Romantic term no longer 
taken literally by anyone but grant-writers and Disney's Imagineers.  this 
sentence also implies that he is an oppressed outsider (in fact he is backed 
in full by the worst art-careerist organizations on earth), and that he is 
trying to help and protect the imagination of the audience as well as 
himself.  Yet he fails on close scrutiny to distance his hyper-weave or ouvre 
from the hierarchy of imagination that is to blame for the bad problems we 
have.]

[End of my comments for now; I will address these last FAQ's at a later time. 
 the reader of this post may be able to find instances of the weaknesses of 
the first part in this second part:  namely jargon, contradiction, and an 
overall MFA-program-graduate fulsomeness.  I would also like to apologize if 
my comments dismay those who have supported and praised Peppermint's work in 
the past.  Few artists fail the test of Genius 2000 criticism as blatantly or 
totally as Peppermint.  I have more faith in other artists' ability to avoid 
the deep errors Peppermint makes in CN_0, yet I recognize the extreme 
pressure to make those errors exerted by the artworld we live in.  Everyone 
in fact is susceptible to such pressures, and to the belief that the 
pressures are beneficent.  No human is ever beyond redemption.]

Q:I thought you were a feminist... what is with all these fragmented bodies
and heads rendered faceless by bright lights?

A:This is not decision based on gender (the images in question are not even
gender specific) but moreover a decision informed by 1st world class.  All
images of American artists, cultural transgressives and/or individuals and
friends who dedicate their lives toward creative work under the auspices of
this country must be rendered as "overexposed" for the duration of Conductor
Number Zero.  This is how I choose to represent the disregard and
impossibility of the artist amidst the spectacle of accelerated capitalism.


Q:Themes of overt, sexual sleaziness in your work do nothing for me.

A:Components of my work can function as carriers for pleasure or agents of
seduction or repulsion (depending on the viewers openess and sincerity
toward themselves) but to read my work only as such and to assume it is
there for one's guilty consumption is a great reduction and a less than
rigorous reading.


Q:Are you the anti-christ?

A:No.  That would be a simple game of which the binary structure is already
too widely known and even today still oftentimes blindly accepted and
employed.  At this time in history I think the job of anti-christ would very
boring and un-inspired work.


Q:Are you doing all this for self-recognition?

A:My work is motivated by self-recognition or re-cognizance, a returning to
ones-self.  I consider creative work to be a series of self-re-introductions
and re-evaluations.  A lifetime in update,
(ftp://www.restlessculture.net/pub/LifetimeInUpdate4.0.mp3) re-vision; to
see again.  An artist cannot work outside the obvious shipwreck of religion
and morality without constant assessment of position and situation.  These
self-surveys constitute the bases of ethics.  Every moment of schizophrenia
(decision) that arises in my working process are likewise moments of ethical
consideration.


---------- end of faq



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