Quinn Norton - Privacy, Ephemerality, and Self
Journalist Quinn Norton explores ideas relating to privacy, secrecy, and self in an age where nothing is ever forgotten.
You, the World and I (2010) - Jon Rafman
When Orpheus’ beloved Eurydice dies, he cajoles his way into the underworld with his musical charms and his lyre. Wanting her but not her shade, he cannot forbear looking back to physically see her and so loses her forever. In this modern day Orphean tale, an anonymous narrator also desperately searches for a lost love. Rather than the charms of the lyre, contemporary technological tools, Google Street View and Google Earth, beckon as the pathway for our narrator to regain memories and recapture traces of his lost love. In the film, they are as captivating and enthralling as charming as any lyre in retrieving the other: at first they might seem an open retort to critics of new technology who bemoan the lack of the tangible presence of the other in our interactions on the Internet.
Our narrator remembers that once, with her back turned while facing the Adriatic Sea, a Google Street View car drove by and took a picture of his beloved, who detested being photographed, without her realizing it. Our narrator cherishes this photograph and the entire relationship becomes encapsulated in the screen capture replacing all other experiences and memories. Soon it is not enough. Our narrator cannot imagine that, in a world where everything is recorded, that someone could completely disappear. In daily systematic searches for photographs of the nameless other, Google Street View and Google Earth allow him to move seamlessly through vast detailed three-dimensional space. This extraordinary geographical and social exploration is favored by Google satellite images, user-created 3D renderings of Stonehenge and Machu Picchu and Street View panoramas of favorite vacation spots. As an undifferentiated series of cultural, historical and contemporary symbols float together or follow one another in rapid succession, in a world where Dutch anthropologists discover pre-Socratic fragments on Turkish islands ...
Status Symbols
Joseph Del Pesco is over caffeinated. from lee Walton on Vimeo.
Beth O'Brien is dancing to her alarm clock. from lee Walton on Vimeo.
Lee Walton's use of Facebook in his most recent video series continues his habit of publicly displaying what we often think of as private moments. The artist calls himself an "experientialist" and his performances, videos, and participatory projects often merge situationism and instruction-art to convey or slightly tweak the experience of everyday life. He's created elaborate instruction sets that determine the marks made in his seemingly abstract drawings representing activity on a sports field or at a major street intersection, and, on some occasions, the lists of instructions themselves have stood in for these drawings. Walton's commitment to playing by the rules in his art have borne humorous results in projects like his season-long online free throw competition with Shaquille O'Neill, or his compilation video of strangers on the streets of New York following his instructions to lift ever-dwindling payphone receivers off their hooks. The artist's Red Ball project helped pioneer net-based performance projects that rely on distributed decision-making networks--of which MTAA's Automatic for the People is a more recent example. But now Walton is taking his friends' Facebook status messages as instructions and acting them out in short videos posted to his Vimeo account and (of course) his Facebook profile. It seems safe to say that none of the subject lines were originally intended as instructions, but seeing Walton act-out statements such as Joseph Del Pesco is over caffeinated, Marcie McAfee Carrier is doing late night Yoga and is so happy and peaceful!!!, Beth O'Brien is dancing to her alarm clock, or Andy Diaz Hope is wielding a knife calls attention to the public/private line often ...
Removal Studies (2008) - Michael Kontopolos
From the artist's statement:
"Removal Studies" are a series of videos made using time-lapse photography. These videos are sleep studies that observe the reaction of the unconscious body to the negative stimulus of removing the covers. The covers are removed by a machine that attaches to the bed and tugs a slight amount off in increments throughout the night. By studying the sleeping body, my aim was to capture something very honest and very animal about human beings. I was interested in this gesture of removal -- and subsequently, exposure -- and how it could function as a larger metaphor.
Rhizome 2009 Commissions: Announced!
We are pleased to announce the international group of artists who will receive grants through the Rhizome Commissions Program, this year.
Their projects will culminate in a variety of forms, from performance, to sound, to interactive websites and installation, to works that manifest across multiple disciplines. Each one pushes forward the field of contemporary art engaged with technology. All works will be completed by Summer 2009 or earlier, with information available on Rhizome.
The next call for commissions will take place in January 2009. Commissioned artists receive a grant and are invited to present their work at Rhizome's affiliate, the New Museum of Contemporary Art.
Marfa Webring, Jona Bechtolt, Claire Evans, Aaron "Flint" Jamison
In Marfa Webring, the artists Claire Evans, Jona Bechtolt and Aaron "Flint" Jamison will attempt to alter the Google search results for the town of Marfa, TX by creating a Webring and, then, (with the cooperation of the town's permanent residents) investigating the results of this action on the daily life of the town.
Case, Brody Condon
Brody Condon will re-create William Gibson's cyberpunk classic Neuromancer at a red barn theatre in rural Missouri with a local, former political activist in the role of the protagonist.
Untitled (Plate Tectonics), Andy Graydon
Andy Graydon explores sound as a building material. The project begins with field recordings taken at New York City arts institutions and manifests as phonograph records and a website where visitors are encouraged to add their own ambient recordings of installation and performance spaces.
Versionhood, Kristin Lucas
The artist Kristin Lucas recently changed her legal name from Kristin Sue Lucas to Kristin Sue Lucas and, thus, in her words, created "the most current version of Kristin Sue Lucas." In Versionhood, Lucas will consult ...
Free at Last... Sort Of.
Critical Art Ensemble co-founder Dr. Steven Kurtz has been cleared of all charges in what is widely acknowledged as a bogus mail fraud case, and the federal government has said that they do not plan to appeal the judge's decree that the case was without merit. The CAE is a tactical media group whose highly-acclaimed, internationally-exhibited art and activist academic writings have been explicitly critical of threats to civil liberty, such as those posed in the case against Kurtz and his colleague, Professor Robert Ferrell. Dr. Ferrell and Dr. Kurtz were accused for an activity common in the field of scientific research: mailing each other materials in the spirit of collaboration and information-sharing. The U.S. government originally charged Kurtz with bioterrorism, after local officials discovered biological artwork in his home while responding to an emergency call regarding the tragic death of his wife. When this tack failed, they tried to save face by prosecuting both Kurtz and Ferrell for mail fraud. The allegation was that this use of the mail violated the terms of sale of the innocuous bacteria exchanged between the two parties. Under the Patriot Act, being found guilty of this crime could carry a sentence of up to twenty years in prison, rather than the five that used to threaten gangsters, petty criminals, and the long list of activists the government has previously tried to silence. At a MoMA screening of Lynn Hershman's film Strange Culture, which centered on Kurtz's case, the artist said that he was fairly certain that this was the first instance in which an individual was charged with fraud without another party actually claiming to have been defrauded. Others have previously likened the case to an act of making a federal case out of [allegedly] breaking the warranty on ...
Making the Most of Negative Space
By now, many Rhizome readers are familiar with the ordeal endured by Steve Kurtz, a member of the tactical media collective Critical Art Ensemble dubiously charged with "mail fraud" (when bioterrorism allegations didn't stick) following the sudden death of his wife. More details on the case, which resonated in ripples throughout the art world and raised many important questions about free speech rights, can be found on the CAE Defense Fund website. Now CAE and their frequent collaborators, the Institute for Applied Autonomy, are teaming-up in an exhibition at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, in Kurtz's city of residence, Buffalo, NY. The show, entitled "Seized," revolves around the materials taken by the FBI in their occupation and search of Kurtz's home. The negative spaces left behind by these absent books, art works, and other seemingly innocuous objects are filled by the garbage the FBI left behind. The show will also include the works in which CAE was engaged at the time, and which came under Homeland scrutiny. These include Free Range Grain, Molecular Invasion, and GenTerra, all of which explore the systems of scientific research as models for discussing the impact of biotechnology on our food, our bodies, and ironically, our security. The exhibition will be open June 7-July 13 and, like the negative spaces filled by government garbage in the exhibited documentation, the show offers an opportunity to fill the hole punched by this unfortunate series of events with critical conversation. - Marisa Olson
"Art in the Age of Terrorism" Panel, Steve Kurtz at Eyebeam Tonight
In a special panel hosted by Eyebeam, artist Steve Kurtz will speak openly tonight about his experience in federal court and the claims of bioterrorism filed against him. This is his first public appearance since his case was dismissed. He will be joined in discussion by science writer Carl Zimmer, bioethicist George Annas and author Eugene Thacker. The talk is free, open to the public, and it begins at 7pm. This event is co-organized by the 2008 World Science Festival and the Berkeley Center for New Media.
Blank Spots on a Map: State Secrecy and the Limits of the Visible
For the next New Silent Series program at the New Museum, Blank Spots on a Map: State Secrecy and the Limits of the Visible, geographer and artist Trevor Paglen will explore the network of hidden budgets, state secrets, covert military bases, and disappeared people that military and intelligence insiders call the "black world." Over the course of his talk, Paglen will lead the discussion from "non-existent" Air Force and CIA installations in the Nevada desert to secret prisons in Afghanistan and to a collection of even more obscure "black sites" startlingly close to home. Using hundreds of images he has produced and collected over the course of his work, Paglen shows how the black world's internal contradictions give rise to a peculiar visual, aesthetic, and epistemological grammar with which to think about the contemporary moment.
BUY TICKETS
Friday May 9th, 7:30 PM
the New Museum, New York, NY
$8 general public, $6 Members (Rhizome and New Museum)
Norwayweb (2007) by Bjorn Magnhildoen
Artist Bjorn Magnhildoen in Norwayweb creates a "carpet" made of numbers derived from Norwegian tax payer information. Accessing roughly 4 million databases via "web scraping", the "carpet" is immediately triggered upon each visit to the web site, forcing the visitor to become a participant in the collection and redistribution of "private" information. Magnhildoen comments, "While the police earlier put goal-oriented tasks to suspected individuals and groups, now the whole population will be surveilled."
Marc Garrett of Furtherfield wrote a fascinating review of the work last month where he discusses the piece within the context of widespread digital surveillance.
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Zoë Salditch