Nmherman on Sun, 26 Aug 2001 00:33:38 +0200 (CEST) |
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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 Reply-to: <A HREF="mailto:Genius2000Conference2000@yahoogroups.com"> Genius2000Conference2000@yahoogroups.com</A> To: list@rhizome.org CC: Genius2000Conference2000@yahoogroups.com Subj: <thingist> CN_ZERO | FAQ | FOR WHITNEY ARTPORT Date: 8/9/2001 10:45:39 PM Central Daylight Time From: mint77@restlessculture.net (infomix) Sender: owner-thingist@bbs.thing.net Reply-to: <A HREF="mailto:thingist@bbs.thing.net">thingist@bbs.thing.net</A> To: thingist@bbs.thing.net 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- t h i n g i s t message by infomix <mint77@restlessculture.net> archive at http://bbs.thing.net info: send email to majordomo@bbs.thing.net and write "info thingist" in the message body -------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold