hi crumbs,
i was interested in this discussion happening on the thing list, about
blogging and how the landscape of art criticism, art production, studio
visits, etc, has changed with increasing access to online space....
see below the original post from Rob Murphy and a reply from Liza
Sabater...
sarah


> From: Murphy <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 25 January 2005 05:00:43 GMT
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [thingist] Using my blog as my artists ideas book
> Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
>
>
> On Jan 24, 2005, at 2:28 AM, liza sabater wrote:
>
>> I'll let the artists on this list who have blogs talk about them. Let
>> me just say that what I love about reading some of their blogs is
>> just having access to another dimension of their selves as people,
>> first and artists, second. This may sound weird but, in a way, it
>> humanizes their work.
>
> When the web started happening, around 1994 or so, curators would ask
> me "who is the Picasso of the Web" meaning, I guess, who should they
> take seriously. I told them Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who had one of
> the first artist web site. It was just a portfolio of their past and
> current work but, at the time, I thought they had the essence of the
> web in their work. Still do. That's not what curators wanted to hear
> or see. They wanted something to show in a gallery space or, at least,
> to show the exhibitions committee where they worked. I couldn't help
> them there, still can't.
>
> Transparency. C&J-C are all about transparency. They do their work in
> public and engage the public in a variety of ways. How they raise such
> enormous amounts of money selling drawings I don't know and, frankly,
> I don't want to know. Architects do it all the time. Even without the
> Internets people like me knew what they were up to at any given time
> and they always took the time.
>
> Whenever the art market is going into a nose dive (as it seems to be
> doing now) or when it is in recovery there is always a lot of art
> about the art market. Reading lots of art blogs over the past month
> and finally becoming blogged-out I see the same thing happening, but
> in super drive mode. It's like the East Village Art Scene was.
>
> Connect, only connect.
>
> Rob

and liza's reply:

        From:     [log in to unmask]
        Subject:        Re: [thingist] Using my blog as my artists ideas book
        Date:   25 January 2005 07:17:57 GMT
        To:       [log in to unmask]
        Reply-To:         [log in to unmask]

threading ...

i am sure everybody has seen the rash of new media art programs being
shut down. most people would say that nma is dead. i may have said that
myself somewhere. what dawned on me today is that maybe these programs
are shutting down because they cannot keep up. their model of
administration is based on scarcity and there is no such thing as
scarcity in the nma landscape. on the contrary, it's hard to keep up
with that is out there. so there is no way of really saying this person
or that is *the one and only*? just a thought ... i mean, look at
blogs. their proliferation is freaking out people in big media for many
reasons : loss of influence, loss of relevancy but most certainly most
important to their business, loss of ad revenues. wouldn't new media
technology make a nma program irrelevant?

> That's not what curators wanted to hear or see. They wanted something
> to show in a gallery space or, at least, to show the exhibitions
> committee where they worked. I couldn't help them there, still can't.

yeah cracks me up when people want to see the resident artist's studio.

> Transparency. C&J-C are all about transparency. They do their work in
> public and engage the public in a variety of ways. How they raise such
> enormous amounts of money selling drawings I don't know and, frankly,
> I don't want to know. Architects do it all the time.

who was it that said the new social value blogs bring is in having
fifteen *people* of fame. what excites me about blogs is that you can
see a bit more clearly how what some people would describe as
alternative economies are actually ecologies and how they are, in turn,
creating alternative concepts of value.

christo and jeanne-claude call themselves environmental artists, right?
it seems they know a lot about how to sustain their own art ecology.
(btw, i love their *myths about us* section).

> Even without the Internets people like me knew what they were up to at
> any given time and they always took the time.

direct mail, direct request, direct contact. Connect, connect.

<snip>

> Reading lots of art blogs over the past month and finally becoming
> blogged-out I see the same thing happening, but in super drive mode.
> It's like the East Village Art Scene was.
> Connect, only connect.

and without RSS might as well not have a friggin' blog at all.

feed and connect.

/ liza