Thanks, Marc and Johannes for your responses to my last post …

Marc, as is often the case, the remix performance at ELMCIP was triggered
by all of the performances that came before it -- many of which I sampled
from and threaded into the final remix. In a way, it felt as though I was
performing a select sampling of material from Museum of Glitch Aesthetics
as a realtime amplification of what it's like to embody the spirit of
atemporal net art and #elit practitioners, albeit in more 2.0 / socially
network formats.

Which brings me to your question:

<Are you yourself as a performing entity, displaying similar qualities -
are you an interface of what's happening around you?>

Absolutely, and it's something that I investigate in remixthebook, although
the figure / persona I construct in that theoretical fiction is referred to
variously as a medium, artist-medium, and/or postproduction medium. There
can be no doubt that the relationship between artist, medium and interface
is going through radical transformation and has been for some time now. As
you say, Marc, this shift "has pushed the traditional concept of exhibiting
'art' off its axis." Of course, this does not mean that we're watching the
slow disappearance of fine art per se nor the upmarket commodity culture
that supports the finer forms of art-objects at the exclusion of most other
experimental practices. But one thing we have learned and that @futherfield
and many others tuning in to this channel explore is that the expanding
parameters of practice in relation to art(ist), medium, and interface are
enabling new models of creativity to (potentially) flourish in arenas that
operate outside of the fine arts tradition. This is what I live for ...

Johannes, thanks for your insights and questions. I think I was using the
term "exhausted/exhausting" in two contexts, that is, 1) what does it take
it to exhaust a work's (remixological) potential over time, and 2) at what
point does the artist (do the artists) find themselves having exhausted all
of their own creative energy attempting to answer #1.

Regarding your other question, i.e. about the pressure toward interaction
in contemporary curating practices, I agree with you that some recent
attempts to trigger audience participation seem overdetermined and at times
turn the Brechtian model of *ostranenie*, or "defamiliarization," into
something like farce. In the exhibition of Museum of Glitch Aesthetics at
Harris, and in other works of mine, the interactivity or co-conspiratorial
role played by the other is hopefully more in line with Brecht and some of
the most provocative figures of late 20th century literary metafiction who
employed similar tactics in their anti-novels (and these are the books that
were and are on display in the glass cases at my Museum of Glicth
Aesthetics exhibitions). In the early part of my own trajectory (almost 20
years ago), I wrote and published a couple of these anti-novels myself, but
eventually felt too bound by the print book to fully investigate the coming
forms of net practice I saw developing on the horizon.

Best,

Mark

P.S. the term "anti-novel" is problematic -- as is another term I
occasionally use in my research lab: anti-disciplinary. I still use them,
though. Perhaps Duchamp, again, was on to something when he said:

"For me there is something else in addition to yes, no or indifferent -
that is, for instance - the absence of investigations of that type. . . . I
am against the word 'anti' because it's a bit like atheist, as compared to
believer. And the atheist is just as much of a religious man as the
believer is, and an anti-artist is just as much of an artist as the other
artist. Anartist would be much better, if I could change it, instead of
anti-artist. Anartist, meaning no artist at all. That would be my
conception. I don't mind being an anartist . . . What I have in mind is
that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used,
we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way as a bad
emotion is still an emotion."