Someone sent me an obnoxious quote from an obnoxious essay on post-internet art:
While early new media art communities were built on ethics of openness and collaboration, surf clubs and platform-based practices prosper on the nepotism [sic] and influence of online and regional friendships. In 2014, the internet is not so democratic and neither is the art world. Privileges of access to the art world come through unlikely cross-platform friendships with critics, academic blogger meritocracy, and follower-populism. Artists with higher follower counts become aesthetic opinion leaders, soft-capitalizing on the attention of the right gallerists, art lovers, art students, and New Yorkers. To base your art practice around any one platform is to submit yourself to the social hierarchies created by impressions of influence and popularity with the communities you build and engage with.
The author is Jennifer Chan. The quote was in a book, which students are reading. Depressing. Let's take it line by line:
While early new media art communities were built on ethics of openness and collaboration, surf clubs and platform-based practices prosper on the nepotism* and influence of online and regional friendships.
This is the exact opposite of the truth. The dynamic content of blogging software platforms opened up "net practice" from the old days of fixed html pages dependent on collections of hyperlinks for traffic. Suddenly hyperlinks could be generated "on the fly" and conversations could happen right on the page under discussion (instead of through a guestbook or related BBS).
In 2014, the internet is not so democratic and neither is the art world. Privileges of access to the art world come through unlikely cross-platform friendships with critics, academic blogger meritocracy, and follower-populism. Artists with higher follower counts become aesthetic opinion leaders, soft-capitalizing on the attention of the right gallerists, art lovers, art students, and New Yorkers.
Authority based on "higher follower counts" is a completely different concept from authority based on personal contacts. Chan thoughtlessly mashes them together here.
To base your art practice around any one platform is to submit yourself to the social hierarchies created by impressions of influence and popularity with the communities you build and engage with.
"Blogosphere" sites that are self-hosted (which includes '06-'08 surf clubs) didn't partake of the centralized, mass-control structures of a commercial platform such as Tumblr or Facebook. Chan is voluntarily operating in a far more restrictive environment while projecting her hierarchies and elitism onto surf clubs she never participated in.
As an artist friend noted, Chan "pushes privilege shaming to such an extent that we're supposed to feel bad about being friends with other artists." Resentment is raised to a statement of high principle.
Rhizome.org has archived at least one of the surf clubs from the mid-'00s (Nasty Nets) but has never publicly announced it, or had symposia where some of Chan's revisionism could be cleared up. She was in school when all that was going on and is just fabricating theories about the era (or borrowing her bad ideas from Brad Troemel, who also wasn't there).
*nepotism means giving jobs to your relatives -- I think "cronyism" is the word she means to use here
