At 6:55 PM -0800 2/22/05, ryan griffis wrote:
>with much performance and site-specific works/happenings the ephemeral
>"work" is often treated as a vehicle for it's documentation, which
>becomes the concrete "work" that circulates in the economy.
Duchamp's urinal immediately comes to mind. That found
anti-aesthetic object was particularly noteworthy because of its
non-noteworthiness. It was so *not* about that particular urinal.
It was about the insertion of any old urinal into a system that
prized specific objects. So what does that system do? They make a
prized specific object out of that random urinal and preserve it in
the very spirit Duchamp opposed. This seems fitting:
http://www.renewal.org.au/artcrime/pages/duchamp.html
cf: http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?search=Luke11:47-48
I'm not arguing that all net art wants to be ephemeral, but much of
it does. Not because of software obsolescence or because it lacks an
art market, but because that's what the art is about conceptually.
To attempt to preserve such work misses the point of the work.
curt
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