Hi all,
On Jun 15, 2006, at 7:00 PM, Greg Turner wrote:
>
> Sorry to derail, but as any fule kno, Monty Python did in fact record
> two specials entirely in German, filmed in Bavaria.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Fliegender_Zirkus
Of course you are right. I've even seen one of these specials while
channel surfing one night, jet-lagged in my hotel room at a conference
in Salzburg around 1999. Of course, The Lumberjack Song transcends all
languages.
But I sort of derailed the conversation. We were talking about fun.
On Jun 14, 2006, at 3:58 AM, Sarah Cook wrote:
> i wonder if there is a correlation between institutional curatorial
> responsibility (vs negligence) and fun, in particular.
> steve dietz has written a great piece about a robert morris
> installation which was shut down at the tate because its fun
> interactivity became dangerous.
Visiting the current Richard Serra exhibition at Gagosian Gallery here
in New York I noticed that other visitors tended to stand around the
edge of the main gallery looking at the sculpture -- they're kind of
like hedges arranged in a maze made of rolled/forged core-ten steel. I
just naturally walked through the piece and soon everyone followed me.
I guess I gave them permission. It was a lot more fun because people
were repositioned in relationship to the work and each other. What is a
rather grandiose bit of formalism turns into something else when you
interact with it. Perhaps there's some kind of link that could be made
from the Morris to Serra in this respect.
Pictures of the Serra:
http://modernartobsession.blogs.com/modern_art_obsession/images/
richard_serra3.jpg
> it's not a lot different with technology - when play is invoked as the
> default mode of inquiry there will also be some people who will push
> that play too far and try and break the piece (which is a bigger
> problem regarding interactivity in gallery spaces, as Christiane Paul
> and others have pointed out here before).
Or check their email. Haven't we all been there.
I'm surprised no one has tried to hack into the SpacePlace site. To me
the curatorial ethics of it has as much to do with the technocratic POV
of the piece. Technocrats denigrate "art for art's sake" while
promoting "technology for technology's sake" and when talking to
artists and curators I know this difference is becoming more and more
of a criteria. The technology may be new and cool but it soon won't be
and what is left is content and I think it is the content in this piece
that bothers many people.
> i wonder if we could see Mongrel's project for the Tate website - a
> mashup! - in the same vein
I suppose the difference is that Mongrel was acting upon an existing
database of information that was under the curator's jurisdiction.
There have been other examples of work -- Net-o-Mat and MoMA comes to
mind -- where the institution balked at allowing use of material from
outside their domain. Again, though, if the curator of an exhibition
about hacktivism feels it is her obligation to the artists to defend
their methods and goals in the exhibition, isn't she being ethical
about it?
So, while I don't believe Philip Pocock is a curator simply because he
says he is or that he is relinquishing that position to the "public" I
do think someone at ZKM has to take an ethical position even if it is
to defend the project against the accusations being made against it.
Funny, that was exactly what happened at Artists Space in New York when
an artist wrote unkind things about a church official in the catalog
and the director of the space simply gave in to complaints when she
should have taken some kind of stand.
Robbin Murphy
http://post.thing.net
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