BIO
transformer fire (2008) - Paul Slocum
It would be nice to hear from John Michael about why he picked this piece.
Credit should certainly go to all the nameless videographers capturing phone poles wherever they may burst into flames.
Credit should certainly go to all the nameless videographers capturing phone poles wherever they may burst into flames.
transformer fire (2008) - Paul Slocum
Forgot to mention the artMovingProjects showing of the piece also appeared on the Rhizome calendar a while back.
transformer fire (2008) - Paul Slocum
Guess not. Anyway, Aron Namenwirth, artMovingProjects co-owner, singled out this piece from the mass of spiritsurfers posts and went to special trouble, working with Slocum, to find a way to present it forcefully in a gallery setting. I saw it and it was interesting in that: (i) the monitor was rotated to portrait position to accommodate the five video clips in a vertical row (ii) white space surrounded the group of adjacent clips giving them a more iconic reading, and (iii) the piece was transformed to a series of YouTubes with ordinary, interactive controls into a rather elegant video collage that saved you having to grope for a mouse.
My understanding is the piece was sold to a private collector.
After Namenwirth's version of the piece opened in December 2008 ( http://artmovingprojects.blogspot.com/2008/11/paul-slocum-transformer-fire.html ) Marcin Ramocki included a link to Transformer Fire in his Best of the Web entry for Art Fag City ( http://www.artfagcity.com/2009/01/08/best-of-the-web-contributors-edition-part-six-of-six/ )
It was also featured on ArtCal, I believe.
In any case, this piece has a history predating its appearance on Rhizome with no explanation or back story about 10 days after Slocum's show closed at artMovingProjects. This comment is an attempt to give some of that background.
My understanding is the piece was sold to a private collector.
After Namenwirth's version of the piece opened in December 2008 ( http://artmovingprojects.blogspot.com/2008/11/paul-slocum-transformer-fire.html ) Marcin Ramocki included a link to Transformer Fire in his Best of the Web entry for Art Fag City ( http://www.artfagcity.com/2009/01/08/best-of-the-web-contributors-edition-part-six-of-six/ )
It was also featured on ArtCal, I believe.
In any case, this piece has a history predating its appearance on Rhizome with no explanation or back story about 10 days after Slocum's show closed at artMovingProjects. This comment is an attempt to give some of that background.
Wikipedia Art
This comment of Patrick Lichty's in the Wikipedia discussion section is completely biased advocacy masquerading as scholarship (TS is Lichy):
"This sort of artwork already has strong precedents in history - the Surrealists' Exquisite Corpse, Debord's idea of Situationist detournement, and although I am not part of this collective, I fully intend to include it as part of my chapter for the upcoming book of distributed writing commissioned by Turbulence.org, and it will be mentioned as part of my talk on new art practices at a guest lecture at Denver University on 2/16/09, and I have already written on it on my critical blog in London. Therefore, the reference is to the emergence of the concept, which now exists outside Wikipedia, and is paradoxical but not solipsistic. I think that the person suggesting the idea of letting the idea grow is well-reasoned, and a time for review (say, 90 days) could be set for re-evaluation.--24.14.54.88 (talk) 22:17, 14 February 2009 (UTC)--TS"
In other words, "Just wait three months, gang, and I will have ginned up enough mock outrage and pseudo-discourse to make this art its own subject!
"This sort of artwork already has strong precedents in history - the Surrealists' Exquisite Corpse, Debord's idea of Situationist detournement, and although I am not part of this collective, I fully intend to include it as part of my chapter for the upcoming book of distributed writing commissioned by Turbulence.org, and it will be mentioned as part of my talk on new art practices at a guest lecture at Denver University on 2/16/09, and I have already written on it on my critical blog in London. Therefore, the reference is to the emergence of the concept, which now exists outside Wikipedia, and is paradoxical but not solipsistic. I think that the person suggesting the idea of letting the idea grow is well-reasoned, and a time for review (say, 90 days) could be set for re-evaluation.--24.14.54.88 (talk) 22:17, 14 February 2009 (UTC)--TS"
In other words, "Just wait three months, gang, and I will have ginned up enough mock outrage and pseudo-discourse to make this art its own subject!
