confessions of a whitneybiennial.com curator

Hi Patrick,

Yeah, maybe all that stuff you said, or maybe the dude at the U-Haul counter screwed up the truck order.

My problem with this particluar "intervention" is that it doesn't really dis the Whitney (although the physical trucks may have, had they been there). Instead, it seems to dis Miltos' collaborators – the archinect guys, the Flash designers (although they don't know anything other than they got asked to be in another online collab by some art guy), and you. Maybe this was done to some high-minded conceptual end, or maybe the only end was to increase the value of Brand Miltos. I suppose increasing one's art-fame market value used to be a high-minded concept at one time, but it seems fairly played by this point.

To the Flash designers, the project is presented as, "I think your work is really next level and I want to give you some well-deserved uptown art world exposure." But to the art world, it comes off like, "this Flash crap is just as good as any of your other crap and I'm going to use it as fodder to tactically create a buzz for… Brand Miltos." And the interesting conceptual goal of it all is… ?

As a critic, you're forced to try to tie together a bunch of loose, divergent ends (branding, design/art, flash/code, physical/virtual) to make the intervention seem intentional and give it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was just a screwy, misdirected piece.

The RTMark hack seems to me a much more focused and interesting conceptual tactic (as your article seems to imply).

peace,
curt

PS. Kudos to ryan for the accompanying image:
http://rhizome.org/imagebase/23807.gif


_

patrick lichty wrote:

> Two years ago, I was asked to collaborate in a project organized by
> Miltos Manetas to problematize the disciplinary agendas of shows like
> the Whitney Biennial by being a co-curator of a site called
> whitneybiennial.com, which gained worldwide attention.
>
> One year ago, Miltos asked be for a quick reflection upon the events
> and
> the issues whitneybiennial.com dealt with for the CD release of the
> site. Seldom am I 'quick' or 'brief', and although the bulk of the
> paper was formed in 2003, it was not completed.
>
> Today, those reflections are complete, and I submit them to you as
> additional view of the whitneybiennial.com intervention. The final
> essay is called, "Confessions of a whitneybiennial.com Curator", and
> it
> is slightly too long for most listservs to accept as a text.
> Therefore
> I offer it to you as a PDF from my website with my humblest
> recommendations.
>
> http://www.voyd.com/whitneybiennial.pdf
>
> Thank you,
> Patrick Lichty
> Editor-In-Chief
> Intelligent Agent Magazine
> http://www.intelligentagent.com
> 355 Seyburn Dr.
> Baton Rouge, LA 70808
>