I'm reluctant

Over the past year or so I have been going over memes, forced images and productions from artists studios.
I am targetting Damien Hirsts http://anthropology.net/2007/06/01/damien-hirsts-diamond-encrusted-skull-jeweled-skulls-in-archaeology/
bejewelled skull.
There is no doubt that this work now represents the idea of new media in the minds of the masses.
That's a given no matter where you place the work in your own pantheon. And no matter what your aesthetic determines.
But…,

Writers and critics across the globe herald this work as the embodiment of the new meme.
Death, money, so simply stated. A skull, resurrected and encrusted.
But how does this work expand the meaning of the individual in a distributed network of communal exchange and interaction?
It doesn't. it sits there like a whale waiting for a breach, or in this case a beach.
Where is the individual who manufactured this work? Nowhere to be found. Maybe that was the idea, except millions of euros are getting transferred as we read, Hirst is the author of these transfers. He is the enemy.
I read that he was the new Warhol, poor Andy, sucks to be. us
Behind a coff counting coins Hirst and his lawyers are raking in huge amounts of money. Yet you,poor new media artists think you can reinvent the world with a few lines of code and some photoshop.
Is the distributed image now new media? Make it memorable, make it easy to reproduce.
Does Second Life count?
What is Delicio?
Where are you for chists sake?
Get it together. Forget this list, forget your networks, make a meme, transcend all.
Then again, I could be wrong.
Eric

Comments

, Salvatore Iaconesi

or you could start to play chess.

or, even, if you feel original enough, checkers.

, erik sanner

i don't understand the title of your post. what are you reluctant [to do]?

, Erika Lincoln

erik no no no he is not reluctant
Eric is re·cal·ci·trant
erika

, Eric Dymond

but still unrepentent.
and it's still the product of a large multi national art machine.
a machine that Virillio calls the new Academy of Production.
A machine fed by consumer need for *new* images.
Images to pollute and enrich.
Like an Oil Company Hirst taps into the need to consume, to get what others can't get.
Images for rich white alcoholics.
It's beautiful.

, Lee Wells

Although I do agree with Virillo on a number of points including the one you pointed out. We could look at the 21st century as a liberating moment for many when it comes to the fine arts. The individuals choice to create goes beyond the act of pure labor for monetary gain. Personally I would rather spend the day thinking about painting than digging ditches.

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