Eiffel Tower

View from roof of Pompidou Centre

Tuilleries Gardens

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Some more pictures taken whilst relearning how to use my Mamiya C330. These are of the Brighton West Pier, taken after its recent slump, but before it burnt to a skeleton metal framework.

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Fantastic post on cheesebikini (via tomdolan) about a series of random Mobs being organised via email that involve people getting together to chant a particular phrase or do something odd for 10 minutes, then disperse. Random, pointless, and rather beautiful…

Its a bit like a logical extension of the surrender control project I did with Tim Etchells a while ago, where we sent instructions to people over SMS for a week. I’m currently doing an email interview with Tim for an article, and will post the interview to this blog, along with interviews with Lucy Kimbell and Blast Theory.

I thought i’d post an extended excerpt from the email organising these DumbMobs. Its a bit long, but worth it to appreciate the detail and sheer style being put into these events. For my money, this is ART!

(3) Then or soon thereafter, a MOB representative will appear in the bar, wearing one of the “trucker hats” that is so stylish these days. He or she will pass around slips of paper, on which three important pieces of information will be printed: (a) the MOB site, (b) a particular item at the site, and (c) a secret phrase. Commit all three to memory and put the slip in your pocket. ONCE YOU ARE AT THE MOB SITE, NONE OF THESE SLIPS OF PAPER SHOULD BE VISIBLE.

(4) Leave the bar and walk to the MOB site as quickly as possible. It will take you longer to get there than you think. If you arrive near the final MOB destination before 7:27, stall nearby. NO ONE SHOULD ARRIVE AT THE FINAL MOB DESTINATION UNTIL 7:26.

(5) Find the item and stand around it. Unlike in MOB #1, where the participants were not to acknowledge one another, here you should greet even those you do not know. Talk among yourselves about the item and its relative merits and demerits. Only if you are blocked from seeing the item should you stray to examine other merchandise at the site.

(6) If you are approached by a salesperson, explain that everyone present lives together, in a huge converted warehouse in Long Island City, and that you are there looking for a “[secret phrase].” Explain that you make all purchases as a group.

(7) At 7:37 you should disperse. Thank the salespeople for their help, but explain that the item has been “voted down.” NO ONE SHOULD REMAIN AT THE MOB SITE AFTER 7:39.

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I’m currently writing a piece for Camerawork, a journal associated with the San Francisco Camerawork Gallery. The piece looks at three pieces of work – Lucy Kimbell’s Audit, Tim Etchell’s Surrender Control, and Blast Theory’s Uncle Roy, and discusses them in terms of Nicholas Bourriaud’s theory of Relational Aesthetics. Put simply, Bourriaud suggests the term to describe contemporary art that establishes an event or participatory relationship with audiences, challenging them to become ‘users’ as much as ‘viewers’, and to question the role or value of the ‘art object’. Bourriaud makes a distinction between 60’s & 70’s performance art happenings, where participatory events were used to break through the deadlock high modernism had created by fetishising the art object, and 90’s work, where participation is encouraged as a form of game, or a moment of intimate connection in a globally-mediated world. Bourriaud uses the lovely term ‘hands-on utopias’ to describe the social, but not necessarily political, environments these artists create.

I’m using this theory to see if its a productive way of discussing networked art beyond the primarily technological/political discourse that underpinned the first ‘heroic’ [sic] phase of net.art. In particular, I’ve chosen examples that use the interplay of social relationships mediated through technology as their locus, rather than an exploration of the technology per se.

In my research, I’ve come across this excellent article on social architectures by Sal Randolph, an artist and writer based in New York. Large parts of the essay could apply to current debates around ‘Social Software’ as well, including this part that has echoes of Clay’s comments on the use-values we inscribe into the architectures of software:

“Looking further into this idea of use, it becomes clear that for social architectures to exist at all, they must be functional — in other words people have to have a good reason to be part of them (they must have a use for them). Social architectures as artworks are always functional artworks. People need a purpose for becoming part of the social organization beyond the simple fact that they are participating in an artwork, otherwise the motive force of the structure is dead.”

As our understanding of social uses of the internet matures from ‘is anybody out there?’ to ‘so what are we going to *do* here?’, so networked art is maturing from its initial investigation of the form-factors and politics of the network to an interest in how people are using networked media to connect, and participate in social exchange. Photography matured from technical experiment to social document as the spectacle of the medium wore off, and so networked art seems to be moving on from defining its borders, becoming concerned with the humans beyond the edges of the network as much as the network itself.

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Phil Gyford links to a very nice article about the way Chinese DJ’s are using the net to get the latest Western music. It seems ‘illegal downloads’ are playing a major part in establishing contemporary music culture, and that part of the social kudos of the downloads is their illegal status:

“Among some in the Chinese underground hiphop scene, only tracks which have been downloaded are considered truly “underground” and thus valuable, while any music which is available for purchase in physical form is seen as being tainted by commerciality to some degree”

This reminds me of the way in which northern soul DJs used to cover up their singles with white labels, so that other DJs or clubbers couldn’t identify the tracks. What’s interesting here is that the physical form itself is seen as ‘uncool’ – only MP3s or anonymous CDRs are seen as ‘authentic’.

Is this, like the fad for i-Pod Parties, a sign that music culture is mutating from fetishising material objects (vinyl records, gig tickets, autographs, etc) to fetishising participation and networks (playlists, cut-and-paste bootlegs, P2P, etc)?

Phil Gyford links to a very nice article about the way Chinese DJ’s are using the net to get the latest Western music. It seems ‘illegal downloads’ are playing a major part in establishing contemporary music culture, and that part of the social kudos of the downloads is their illegal status:

“Among some in the Chinese underground hiphop scene, only tracks which have been downloaded are considered truly “underground” and thus valuable, while any music which is available for purchase in physical form is seen as being tainted by commerciality to some degree”

This reminds me of the way in which northern soul DJs used to cover up their singles with white labels, so that other DJs or clubbers couldn’t identify the tracks. What’s interesting here is that the physical form itself is seen as ‘uncool’ – only MP3s or anonymous CDRs are seen as ‘authentic’.

Is this, like the fad for i-Pod Parties, a sign that music culture is mutating from fetishising material objects (vinyl records, gig tickets, autographs, etc) to fetishising participation and networks (playlists, cut-and-paste bootlegs, P2P, etc)?

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The winner of the bid to host the European City of Culture in 2008 was announced today – and its Liverpool. Overall, this seems a good choice – Liverpool can point to historical examples of its cultural significance in the Beatles and the legacy of Victorian industialists in the Walker Art Gallery, and it has signs of a resurgent investment in culture in the Tate Liverpool and the newly opened FACT centre. Its not as far down the regneration route as Newcastle/Gateshead, who seemed not to need it, and had a far more focused proposition than Birmingham, who produced a diverse and strongly multicultural bid on behalf of a large swathe of the West Midlands.

Liverpool has strong similarities to Glasgow, still the model for cultural regeneration in the UK. They both share a dockside industrial heritage, followed by lengthy decline and associated economic and social problems, and both had the roots of a nascent cultural regenration on the ground prior to the bid. Liverpool is probably the safest option, as a boost like this will help to coalesce the nascent regeneration, and provide weight for a different scale of ambition that should hopefully create firm roots for the industries that emerge or relocate to the region as a result of the publicity.

There’s still a lot of controversy about whether cultural regeneration is really a viable option for long-term economic regneration, or whether it is a current ‘fad’, as the Garden Festivals were in the 1980s (scroll down the page for info). One things for sure – there *is* an industry sector that has benefited massively from cultural investment in urban areas. Unfortunately, its the consultants, think tanks and quangoes who charge large fees to tell local and regional councils the things that their own cultural service departments have been shouting about for years…

The winner of the bid to host the European City of Culture in 2008 was announced today – and its Liverpool. Overall, this seems a good choice – Liverpool can point to historical examples of its cultural significance in the Beatles and the legacy of Victorian industialists in the Walker Art Gallery, and it has signs of a resurgent investment in culture in the Tate Liverpool and the newly opened FACT centre. Its not as far down the regneration route as Newcastle/Gateshead, who seemed not to need it, and had a far more focused proposition than Birmingham, who produced a diverse and strongly multicultural bid on behalf of a large swathe of the West Midlands.

Liverpool has strong similarities to Glasgow, still the model for cultural regeneration in the UK. They both share a dockside industrial heritage, followed by lengthy decline and associated economic and social problems, and both had the roots of a nascent cultural regenration on the ground prior to the bid. Liverpool is probably the safest option, as a boost like this will help to coalesce the nascent regeneration, and provide weight for a different scale of ambition that should hopefully create firm roots for the industries that emerge or relocate to the region as a result of the publicity.

There’s still a lot of controversy about whether cultural regeneration is really a viable option for long-term economic regneration, or whether it is a current ‘fad’, as the Garden Festivals were in the 1980s (scroll down the page for info). One things for sure – there *is* an industry sector that has benefited massively from cultural investment in urban areas. Unfortunately, its the consultants, think tanks and quangoes who charge large fees to tell local and regional councils the things that their own cultural service departments have been shouting about for years…

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Steve Dietz, the visionary founder and curator of the Walker Arts Center’s online space Gallery 9, was fired last week as the Walker put its plans for a custom-built Digital Art gallery on hold:

“Steve Dietz, the center’s new-media curator, and six other Walker staff members were laid off in a cost-cutting move that is expected to save more than $1 million annually, officials there said last week. Although the Walker is proceeding with a $90 million expansion scheduled to open in 2005, the center’s director, Kathy Halbreich, said plans to build a digital-art gallery would be deferred for at least five years”

[from the NY Times – log-in required]

Gallery 9 was undoubtedly a role model for other art museums’ engagement with digital and online work. Steve took in important historical projects, such as the archive of adaweb, the ground-breaking curatorial project set up by Ben Weill, and used innovative programming, such as the Art Entertainment Network, to create interfaces between online practise and the ‘real world’ of museums. Of all US museums, it seemed that the Walker really ‘got’ digital art, or at least had the savvy to support someone who really got it and gave them the chance to support innovative work. By firing Steve, they’re sending out the message that, in these post-dot.com-crash times, the internet isn’t a culturally relevant space anymore, and so institutions like the Walker can cut back on their online programmes and get back to the ‘real’ physical stuff that sits still and behaves itself.

But is this being too cynical? Mark Tribe, one of the founders of Rhizome, has suggested taking a wider perspective:

“We are certainly witnessing a retrenchment in institutional support, but these things develop in cycles. I predict that in ten years time every major museum (and many of the not-so-major ones) will have a signficant commitment to new media art in some form. Meanwhile, the boundaries between new media art and other forms of art are getting blurrier–a welcome transition, in my opinion. The walls of the new media ghetto are crumbling. Bring ’em down!”

[From Rhizome’s Digest email]

In 2000, at a Rhizome.org panel at the Kitchen a few years ago when the Whitney Biennale first included online artists, Mark introduced a phrase which elegantly described the bifurcation of net.art into two practises – one based on an exclusive relationship with networks, and one that tries to map networks onto physical museum spaces – ‘net.installation’. Mark now seems to be suggesting that this bifurcation was in fact a sequential, not parallel, development, and that the first phase of the maturation of online art is now over. The second phase will be the rise of ‘net.installation’ – work which mixes the real physical spaces of the museum with the radical dynamics of the net.

In this analysis, Gallery 9 will stand as the apothesis of art museums’ assimilation of the ‘first phase’ of net.art, but where are the role models for net.installation? The walls of the new media ghetto might have been brought down rather abrubtly, but the ingenuity of artists and curators like Steve Dietz will route around the rubble and find other homes. The trouble is, the resources to build something as substantial as Gallery 9 are rare, and normally built bit by bit (excuse the pun) over many years.

Of the three US curators who most successfully infiltrated the museum system in the late 90s, Steve seemed to be the most well established. Ben Weill moved from Adaweb in New York to a frustrating time at the ICA in London, before seeming to find his perfect home at SFMOMA, just in time for the seminal 010101 show. He’s now moved to Eyebeam Atelier, where I hope he finds the perfect environment for his curatorial skills. Christiane Paul is, as Rachel Greene points out in this week’s Rhizome Digest, the last remaining US institutional new media curator, by dint of her ‘adjunct’ position at the Whitney.

Is this the curatorial equivalent of the ‘glass ceiling’ I mentioned in my post about the FACT Centre? How can the excellent work of someone like Steve be brushed aside as if it were an expensive experiment? What kind of strategies can digital curators use to embed their work into the heart of institutions? And is it possible to do this without either compromising the intial political or aesthetic concerns of the artists, or creating a ‘ghetto’ that will condemn these artists to being a kind of prosthetic limb that can be discarded when the money gets tight?

I think Mark is right, in that there are cyclical cultural patterns that will see the re-emergence of digital art within an institutional context. But the problem is, without people like Steve Dietz at the heart of these institutions, it gets harder for artists to make work on their terms, and harder for audiences to see work that challenges and redefines the museum experience.

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Ted Joans, poet and artist, died in April. I remember seeing Ted read his poems at ‘Shakespeare and Co.’, the famous bookstore in Paris. My brother was staying in Paris for a month, and I was over to help the artist Cornelia Parker install an exhibition. I was 19, had just moved to Glasgow to go to Art School, and was enjoying my first tastes of fresh air after the stifling gas of suburbia.

We spent a few weeks in Paris drinking with people in bands that Chris had met under the pretences of starting a magazine that never got off the ground. Chris had wanted to show me the bookstore, so we went along one night to hear Ted Joans give a reading. He gave a fantastic performance, drawing out the lines and swooping his body to accentuate the rhythms in his poetry. He closed by urging us all to steal books from chain stores, then invited us to go and join him for drinks in a nearby bar, where he entertained a growing audience with more anecdotes, dirty jokes and poems.

I’m off to Paris in a couple of weeks, for the first time since that trip, so it feels strangely circular to come across news of Ted Joan’s death. Looking back, my trip reads like such a cliche – suburban kid goes to Paris to hear Beat poets, work with an artist and hang out with moody musicians who lived in crumbling 12th arrondissement apartments. But cliches are not cliches when you’re hearing them for the first time. I was lucky enough to work with Cornelia Parker on a couple more exhibitions, in Leipzig, East Berlin and London, and those trips were full of encounters like the one with Ted Joans at Shakespeare and Co. Full of those happenstance moments when you pinch yourself and think ‘I can’t believe I’m actually here, doing this’.

[more on ted here]