May 2010

Boris Groys, The Weak Universalism. See earlier notes and discussion (and more discussion).

Although shrouded in layers of irony this will do for a manifesto: a weak, low-visibility version of what critic Howard Halle calls "waving the flag for the internet." Better that than the world Halle inhabits (or to be kinder, laments), of cynical frustration over the machinations of the wealthy and powerful regarding collectible objects. Halle asks for a revolution in values but won't recognize the one happening in front of him. Instead he distorts, simplifies, and name-calls: web-fanciers are living on Planet Unreality; the drift to the internet is "foreclosing anything that doesn’t involve technological innovation"; belief that the "internet will save us" is naive because Obama turned out to be a corporatist.

There is no techno-boosterism in Groys' essay, or insistence that the Internet is the only place for what he calls "weak repetitive gestures" meant to "transcend," that is, survive, a milieu of constant, forced change.
It's the opposite of boosterism, he's saying the drive for innovation (new gear replacing old gear, new hot theories replacing old hot theories) is part of what gets us to our present condition.

It's not meant to be a manifesto for working artists; it's a description of where we are. But it has special appeal for those working collectively and/or anonymously outside the gladiatorial contest (lottery?) of being picked to show at a Chelsea gallery, celebrated in the glossies, and then "remaindered" the next year. One can of course operate in that strange system and resist what Groys calls "the strong images of change, the ideology of progress, and promises of economic growth." But homesteading on the web has a lower entry cost.

Groys' argument can't be easily compressed or sound-bitten: you should read the essay and draw your own conclusions. I find it more amusing and refreshing than Ben Davis's dreary screed about the state of postmodernism, which seems more interested in political theory than what artists are doing.

Continuation at AFC of the discussion of Ben Davis's unfrozen caveman essay about the politics of the institutional art world (edited for length):

...So Tom, if you feel that Davis’s political read is outdated, perhaps you could offer us a more current one. Just don’t rely on the old “teh interwebs elected Obama” thing, because as we’ve seen in the last year and half, the President’s abilities to act, while not completely unsuccessful, have certainly been hemmed in by the entrenched power structure as it exist on that patch of Planet Reality called Washington, D.C. And this despite the web-enabled tidal wave that sent him to the White House...
Howard Halle // 23 May 2010, 10:39 am

A while back Paddy, I, and various commenters hashed over a lecture by Boris Groys at SVA called “Everyone is an Artist.” The title annoyed me but it turned out to be something I really liked. I present this as my own possible misreading of Groys. Rome, city-states, etc don’t fall because armies storm the barricades, they fall because people get interested in other things and drift away from the permanent siege of the city gates. The most interesting thing happening at the NewMu isn’t the latest Gavin Brown offering to curators incapable of doing their own homework, it’s Rhizome.org, the homely stepchild no one at the museum knows what to do with. And not just Rhizome per se, but the hundreds of artists and sites and projects they link to and discuss. There is a hardy band of commenters at Rhizome who still struggle to fold their work into the “discourse” that Ben Davis describes in such detail and that has as its apex Urs Fischer. Many, more have walked away from the whole schmear because it’s rigged, incomprehensible, boring, and slow. As an artist and recovering critic, I have had a much better time investigating the 1s and 0s realm and the problems of how it might be represented in public space (including gallery space) than I was having writing for the slicks covering the New York scene in the ’90s. In the Amy Sillman discussion I noted that you opposed painting to Skin Fruit rather than a NewMu show with a cyber/internet/media component such as Unmonumental or YTJ–-the latter would require the hard work of finding points of comparison between what are really completely different ways of thinking and working. Easier to just say “the net’s not there yet” and put it out of mind. Meanwhile artists drift away from the gladiatorial contest that you are professionally forced to cover.
tom moody // 23 May 2010, 12:20 pm

Davis’ article is excellent in how it reassesses a particular brand of theory, and how the failings of this brand are due largely to how postmodernist strategies to re(con)figure politics/power-structures have been co-opted by those systems. Or, the revolutionary idealism of postmodernist thought has always been just another symptom (an academic side-effect)of the very systems it intended to critique in the first place.
Ultimately, Davis is proposing the need for a new operational logic (operating system?). Again, for him to not refer to the internet at all (though the manner in which he discusses Josephine Meckseper becomes a conversation about net artists, if you squint a little) reads as a telling omission, particularly given the forum/format his article appears under. Davis’ blind spot – intentional or otherwise – does reflect the trend for prominent (arts) print writers to give far more credence to the “schmear” than to other, new, and potentially more vital practices (like those occurring on “teh interwebs”). And to meaningfully engage with these migratory “energies” requires more than just a cursory glance into their thresholds. New-media artists/writers should be held to that same challenge, too, rather than just abandoning any obligation of engaging with a “gladiatorial contest” that they’ve deemed irrelevant.
Jesse P. Martin // 23 May 2010, 4:13 pm

I don’t doubt what you say about there being artists who’ve checked out of the game as it’s currently played, and that some of them are concentrating their efforts on the web. But in waving the flag for the internet, and being so quick to dismiss Davis’s analysis, I believe you’re choosing the trees over the forest.
What I’d like to see, personally, is a revolution in cultural values, not a decanting of old wine into new bottles. Furthermore, to the extent that it’s possible, I don’t see why old-media artists couldn’t be as effective in addressing that change as new-media acolytes. For every cyber-artist drifting away from the siege, there’s probably a painter or some such doing likewise. But as the whole discussion over Sillman suggests, you seem to foreclose anything that doesn’t involve technological innovation. I’d say the whole emphasis on means as opposed to ends is what’s gotten us into the place we’re in.
Heron of Alexandria created a steam engine in the First Century, but it went nowhere because slavery was still accepted as the norm; manpower was cheap and widely available. Rome itself wouldn’t fall for another 300 years, and Heron’s innovation wouldn’t take root until the end of the 18th century, after a period during which the empirical method supplanted the teachings of the Church. Values have to change before technology can do its work. That goes for today.
As far as covering the gladitorial contest, as you put it, yeah that’s right; it’s how I make a living. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get the bigger picture.
Howard Halle // 23 May 2010, 4:42 pm

Somehow my statement on the Amy Sillman threads– “you’d think there would be more curiosity about the new tools, content, and problems-to-solve presented by omnipresent technology”–keeps getting translated into “You seem to foreclose anything that doesn’t involve technological innovation.” The statement I’ve had accompanying my blog since 2001 reads: “I’m amused by the lingering rhetoric of futurism–-the Buck Rogers, ‘machines-will-change-our-lives’ spieling–-that continues to surround digital production in our society. The computer is a tool, not magic, and possesses its own tragicomic limitations as well as offering new means of expression and communication…” It would be nice if someone would check out my writing before calling me a techno-booster.
tom moody // 23 May 2010, 10:57 pm

At Paddy's we are discussing Rashaad Newsome's video "The Conductor," currently on view at MOMA/PS1 and the artist's website (but not YouTube). It's a mashup of hand gestures from hiphop videos synced to Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. Learned a new phrase, forum culture, that can be used to distingush internet-hosted-and-vetted work from museum-sponsored media art.

And then proceeded to pound this distinction into the ground over the course of a long online conversation.

(The phrase is from Beau Sievers, who has posted this computer art history syllabus.)

Excerpt from the Newsome thread:

when [paddy] used the word “virtuosic” it caught me. even if i thought that about Conductor i’m actually not sure how’d i’d argue the qualification. i guess cos the technical bar for making a mashup is set so low whereas traditional markers of virtuosity – like improvising over rhythm changes at a fast tempo or making it through the hammerklavier unscathed – require an elite skill set by definition. and im not sure if more cuts synced tighter to more music is more virtuosic or not. i suppose it is (marclay video quartet) but that was also pre-youtube. anyway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc7nmNJozTc
pbd // 24 May 2010, 4:08 pm

[leaked internal] memo to curators, MOMA Dept of Film and Video: “…when evaluating video art please take into account the following: virtuosity, showmanship, editing skillz, mashup style, beatmeistering, beat-matching, eye for pop culture memes, input from forum culture (if any), and general ‘getting down.’”
tom moody // 24 May 2010, 5:06 pm

...sounds ridiculous but it’s a bit like that! i was watching Conductor thinking “rapper hand gestures dont match basic conductor patterns (hands always go up on the last beat of a bar). is that a minus? all his cuts are right on beat without fail, is that a plus? cuts on beat aren’t hard to do, is that a minus? focus on mid 90s bad boy records in the first movement suggests artist favors east coast over west coast, is that a plus? and where are bone thugs?”
i dunno maybe something’s there…not in this piece but in the difficulty of comparatively evaluating the stuff generally, but i’m unable to articulate any of it.
pbd // 24 May 2010, 6:29 pm

Update: Post expanded.