[NetBehaviour] My thoughts on Theory in 2014

ahanon aha at aharonic.net
Fri Jun 13 21:10:02 CEST 2014


Hiyas!

Thanks for sharing!!

The text is very stimulating, in my mind. However, perhaps somehow
secretly ironically, I'd like to link, at least for now, with:

> "I've overheard your theory
> .
> I guess sir, if you say so
> Some of us just like to read"
> In many ways, it seems that theory is represented by what the market will
> bear.  In closing, I'd like to refer to two pieces of wisdom I've heard
> from
> Cleveland Gallerist William Busta, and both artists Joseph DeLappe and
> Mendi
> and Keith Obadike.   From Busta, he said that taste follows your peer
> group,
> and perhaps this is true, but there are also DeLappe's Drone Project that
> makes an exception to this.  From the Obadikes, they said that the trends,
> while important, they eventually become like a hamster wheel.  There is a
> time where you have to get off the treadmill and do the work you feel is
> important to humanity, and more important, important to you.  It's isn't
> about being hip or cool.  It's about doing what matters, whatever that is
> today.
>

Am trying to imagine the ideas here as rhythmic being. In that sense, or
sensuality, it seems like you are talking about frequencies, ranges,
between entrainment, flocking and synchronicity, If elements, eg people,
seem to follow a trend, then perhaps the desire that legitimises the fear
of being "left out", the "odd one", etc. - is simply the rhythmical
aesthetic?
Perhaps not, however, currently, as a rhythmic being, am kind of searching
from waves of sequences.. ;)
So if we go with the above thought (re frequency ranges between elements),
the sentiment of follow "your nose" - perhaps am over paraphrasing here??
- seems like on par with the don't follow the trend, as if a few people
suggest that, the do your stuff, becomes both an
entraining/syncronising/flocking element - and a possible social pressure
for conforming to. (eg, a value judgement, etc..)
While personally am not disagreeing with the centiment of doing stuff as
You really really really do DO DO Do desire - the centiment is in my view,
perhaps Strong, but somehow self defeating.. At least from a rhythmic
aesthetical wave surfing.. ;) (..or maybe just my own..?)

THat was a thought for a day..

Have much fun and a fab middle Sunday while Friday goes on!!

aharon
xx





> My thoughts on Theory 2014.5
> There is so much I could say, but I have limited myself to this short
> missive. In a way I feel like I became Rip Van Winkle when I entered
> Graduate School, as artists usually don't concern themselves with theory
> as
> much as you'd imagine, and my first job in academia was surrounded by
> people
> openly hostile to theory, and my next where the people with whom I could
> converse are simply too busy or involved in their own careers.  This means
> that through the sage conversation with the SenseLab and Erin Manning and
> Brian Massumi, Curt Cloninger, and Sandra Danilovic, I woke up after the
> postmodern focus on epistemology has shifted to the current trope of
> ontology, which I am building bridges to.  Mind you, I have my questions
> about our current state, which I have my own suggestions for.
>
> Much of my critique of where, and I'll have to admit that I will stay with
> the linkage of theory and media art, lies is from a shift from
> thoughtfulness to artworld tactical positionality constructed to get in
> the
> latest anthology.  I could be accused of this, but I will speak in my own
> defense that 90% of the essays and works published have been in the area
> of
> Virtual or Augmented Realities, genres that I have explored since 1996
> (VR,
> AR since about 2002).  It is what I call le trope du annee, which is
> something that I have also had a critique of on theoretical circles. In
> 1998, it was Benjamin (I say this arbitrarily), in 2013 it was Whitehead,
> And I wonder deeply whether the shifts from Poststructuralism to Non-Human
> Ontologies, or from epistemology to ontology for that matter, is a
> reflection of culture, or the resultant disconnect of sheer interest of a
> community who has, at the call of its finest, decided to follow as a path
> of
> least resistance or merely a desire for acceptance and to be part of "the
> conversation".
>
> This is, of course, no less evident in the media art field, there seems to
> be a new genre every year, such as surfing, New Aesthetics, Post-Internet,
> Social Practice, which has a dual effect. First, it causes the aspiring
> artist to conform to fashion, and in many ways, the eponymous song by
> David
> Bowie comes to mind.  Secondly, it causes spasms within the art market and
> the academy as every 3-5 years the "new" becomes canonized, and places an
> emphasis on academic job offerings scarcely with the time allotted for the
> graduate to matriculate. "We're sorry, we realize that post-Jell-oism was
> the rage in 2014, but we're really looking for someone with an emphasis in
> Drone Ontology now."
>
> Yes, things do evolve; I can admit an accept that.  However, I argue that
> what is lacking is an ideology and a rigor for sake of position, as Ian
> Bogost said about the New Aesthetic so well, which he argued was not new,
> and then later James Bridle, in a Rhizome interview, said had nothing to
> do
> with aesthetics in the first place.  Also, take for example, the Rhizome
> panel in which a participant incorrectly stated that there wasn't much net
> art before 2000, anyway, to which my admonition drew a response of, "Well,
> what was discussed was _mostly correct_.  My reply to this is that, taken
> to
> its logical extreme, a panelist might shrug their shoulders and state what
> it matters if six or four million Ukrainians were slaughtered during
> collectivization. The answer would be, "two million lives".
> I know I am grossly exaggerating here, as only in few exceptions does art
> have the impact of a World War or genocide, but it does affect the
> historiographic foundations of the contemporary where we have developed a
> number of artist-theorists (some of them PhDs) who are not well read, or
> practitioners like Jesse Darling who state that an Animated Gif creates
> Brecht's V-Effekt, breaking the fourth wall of the cyber-proscenium where
> it
> is obvious that the 4th wall consists of an LCD screen on the desk. In
> addition GIFs constitute performativity and not performance, as they
> possess
> no live interaction/1st order cybernetic loop, but no one wants to be as
> uncool as to call this out.
>
> Most of these critiques, or critiques of the contemporary is often placed
> off into what has been called "The Generational Conversation", between the
> 'contemporizes' and the 'olds' (who are, what, 90's net artists?)  The
> irony
> of all this is that in 2013 Marisa Olson was asked about her age by a
> curator, and Olia Lialina tells her timeline in a May 2014 Rhizome entry.
> I don't think it has to do with generationalism at all.  Sensibilities
> change, but art is art. Before the New Media, Visual Studies, and Social
> Practice MFAs emerged after 2000, the academy had very little to offer,
> there may have been a number of programs in the mid-90's, but they were
> few,
> and some were linked to computer  science programs. In the days of
> pre-academization of "New Media", there were largely PhDs and autodidacts,
> and no funding. But with the institutionalization of electronic media art,
> sets of practices have been put in place that have made the media arts
> more
> consumable and fundable, not that this is bad by any means.  It just means
> that it commodifies the field, and this includes art, theory, even
> ideology
> has become dominated by capitalism or a Medici-esque patronage, as in
> Jeremy
> Bailey's biting AR portraits.
>
> Actually, one of the most prescient quotes about the state of theory today
> comes from Lady Gaga, who in "Applause", states:
>
> "I've overheard your theory
> .
> I guess sir, if you say so
> Some of us just like to read"
> In many ways, it seems that theory is represented by what the market will
> bear.  In closing, I'd like to refer to two pieces of wisdom I've heard
> from
> Cleveland Gallerist William Busta, and both artists Joseph DeLappe and
> Mendi
> and Keith Obadike.   From Busta, he said that taste follows your peer
> group,
> and perhaps this is true, but there are also DeLappe's Drone Project that
> makes an exception to this.  From the Obadikes, they said that the trends,
> while important, they eventually become like a hamster wheel.  There is a
> time where you have to get off the treadmill and do the work you feel is
> important to humanity, and more important, important to you.  It's isn't
> about being hip or cool.  It's about doing what matters, whatever that is
> today.
>
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>
>





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