[Nettime-bold] Gosh do I hate GH

[Nmherman@aol.com]

++

Dear List:

I want to submit the Genius 2000 Network for the "Net Vision/Net Excellence" 
award at the ars electronica.  Let's discuss how to win 'er and then we'll 
decide where to donate the scholarship to.  

I know it's hard when we're all suffering setbacks, lawsuits, fatigue, 
boredom, and so forth.  It's like Briggs said, it's hard to believe poetic 
language even exists anymore.  Plus the NY scene (Cary and GH) have made 
"Space" their new theme for attacking the webart world.  

They say, "for an artist to occupy a part of space, or as Cary calls it 
'space taken over for art', is radical.  We're radical."  

The only sickening thing is they may have taken the wind out of our sails on 
this one.  At least for appearance's sake.  I think our cachet is plateauing; 
we need to hang in while our second generation of product takes form.  And 
remember, the people we're dealing with as we seek the public's ear are 
unscrupulous and self-serving.  They are not out to help the world but to 
retain their feeling of "being artists."  That's my judgment anyway.  

Explaining it is easy:  Who's qualified to occupy space in this radical 
artistic act?  Just real good artists I presume.  I'd say everyone's already 
occupying the space just fine only not doing much with it.  Dig?  GH and Cary 
want to paint a new coat of cachet on the performance artist bullshit.  "We 
occupy space with radical intensity" (hats off to Yates) but that's cause 
they're artists.  

Plus, they are just doing the Pomo flip--pretending that the very thing that 
is so bad has already completely taken over--thus plastering the foppish 
audience to its seat.  The real situation is that they are plotting 
out--buying--territory in the artworld.  Their territory is "we are the 
artists who occupy space", but the insidious effect is their own hypocrisy.  
By labeling their concept "special and extra-dynamic" they negate and 
plebianize the space everyone else has.  And as I think Carter proved quite 
soundly, distance is electrical and organic distance is between neurons, in 
the synapses, at least as far as the cognition of living organism is 
concerned, space is internal.

But then again most people prefer not to get het up about much of anything 
these days.  Go figure.  I guess it's time to take the problem into the 
street as it were.

Max Herman
Reporting Live
February 17, 2001


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