From: matthew fuller [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2000 1:57 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: harwood@mongrel - new web site
UNCOMFORTABLE PROXIMITY
The Tate Gallery has just published their first
web-site commission, from Harwood - a member of
Mongrel. The site is an exploration of the Tate
collection, the history of Millbank and its
prison, and a reversioning of the Tate's web site.
'From adolescence I had visited the Tate, read the
Art books and generally pulled a forelock in the
direction of the cult of genius, on cue relegating
my own creativity to the Victorian image of the
rabid dog. We know well enough that this was how
it was supposed to be. The historical literature
on 'rational recreations' states that, in
reforming opinion, museums were envisaged as a
means of exposing the working classes to the
improving mental influence of middle class
culture. I was being innoculated for the cultural
health of the nation.'
'I have tried in this collection to play with the
broken links within the Tate's collection,
grafting on the skins of people who are close to
me, dragging parts of the collection through the
mud of the Thames, and infecting some of it with a
relevant disease. This is a personal response to
the cultural attitudes that I found within the
aura of the collection.'
Go to http://www.tate.org.uk/home/default.htm/
Harwood's site will launch in a seperate window
behind the home page of the Tate.
To go directly to the Harwood de Mongrel site:
http://www.tate.org.uk/webart/mongrel/home/default.htm/
Three contexualising essays by Matthew Fuller have
been commissioned by the Tate to accompany this
and a forthcoming site by Simon Patterson:
http://www.tate.org.uk/webart/
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