 |
 |
Ah, thanks Curt; I think this - put much more eloquently - aligns with something I was trying to get at with my earlier question: And (how far) can these (different) aspects/ dimensions of time be separated in art? Or is its role precisely to inseparably entangle them? best sjn ________________________________________ From: Curating digital art - www.crumbweb.org [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Curt Cloninger [[log in to unmask]] Sent: 07 September 2009 22:14 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] Recap: September 2009: "Real-Time: Showing Art in the Age of New Media" Hi Sarah (and all), One thing that stands out to me after having read this recap of the conversation is this idea of multiple speeds and slownesses happening simultaneously at multiple levels. This is a very Deleuzean observation that planes of meanng are not just a matter of molar objects and subjects in spatial and power relations to each other. Rather, meaning and ways of being are more a matter of speeds of movement, attrition, attention, permeation, deterritorialization, etc. +++++++++++++++++ Some scales of speed simultaneously at play in The Art Formerly Known as Time-Based: 1. The time it takes the actual media art object to play out (as Jon Thompson noted -- a decaying sculpture, a perpetually updated data cloud). Smithson's work really problematizes this kind of time. The art collective Spurse has been exploring "deep time/rapid time," considering geological formations over time. Also categorically problematic is aleatoric software (like Brian Eno's "77 Million Paintings") which perpetually runs with enough generative variability to keep from ever "looking" like the same thing twice (although arguably it is performing the same perpetual function at an algorithmic level). 2. The Cartesian clock time that the discrete viewer/user actually spends viewing/interacting with the work in the space (three seconds, 30 minutes, or whatever). 3. The more subjective Bergsonian time (analog, non-digital, qualitative not quantitative) that the discrete viewer spends affectively experiencing the work (could involve personal prior memories, could involve the work coming to mind later after leaving the space). This is related to the Cartesian clock time, but by no means solely determined by it. 4. The time that the entire show or project runs. 5. Archival time -- how the work is archived, collected, subsequently displayed, gradually folded into an art historical canon. 6. The evolutionary time of art criticism and art historical scholarship (and its overlap with philosophy, science, culture theory, etc.) 7. The evolutionary time of an art practice throughout an artist's life. 8. Curatorial research time. 9. Institutional evolutionary time -- the time it takes art institutions to come to terms with and incorporate new media forms (or new conceptual approaches to old media forms). +++++++++++++++++ And of course, historical and political rates of speed contextually permeate and inflect all of the above rates of speed. And of course all of the above rates of speed perpetually permeate and inflect each other. These permeations and inflections are "always already" happening (to greater or lesser degrees). The artist and curator can (and should) attempt to more purposefully orchestrate these temporal permeations. But they are happening already (however haphazardly, slip-shoddily, accidentally, ironically), regardless of the artist or curator's awarenesses or stated intentions. I propose that truly ingenious "event-based" work (in whatever media) is work that invites all of these scales of speed into the work itself, so that the work proves self-aware of its own context -- not hermetically sealed from these other speeds and slownesses, these other rates of advance and attrition. Such ingenious work is not merely multi-media, or even multi-scalar (in a spatial sense) -- it is multi-dromological (to invoke Virillio). It is work that works across multiple scales of speed. It is not merely reducible to a form of "institutional critique" or a form of "activist art." It transverses institutional and political power relations, but it also functions phenomenologically and affectively as an art work in the space itself. Smithson's "Partially Buried Woodshed," Matta-Clark's house cuttings, Duchamp's long-term work on the Green Box, even Bill Viola's slow motion Tristan Project -- all succeed at working across and purposefully invoking multiple scales of time. And none are technically "new media." Some of John Cage's compositions are especially ingenious in this regard. "Water Walk" still invites in the sounds of "real-time, contemporary" radio. Cell phone ring tones can now be heard during 4'33''. Best, Curt At 6:50 PM +0100 9/7/09, Sarah Cook wrote: >Hi CRUMB list readers > >It's Monday (and Labour Day in North America, so a holiday but the >official marking of the back-to-school season), and for the purposes >of those just joining up to this discussion, here is my rough and >ready re-cap of some of the points so far...