confessions from The Whitney Biennial

Well I went tonight to the opening and it was, well, alright……..
Some of the stuff was good, a little really good and well some…I dont know
what they were thinking. The wine they chose tonight was quite nice and had
a wonderful woody flavor and the chips and salsa were very nice as well.

Ran into a number of socialites and artists. All seemed to have the same
opinion that it was alright but nothing to write home about.

The one thing that I think was missing was some sort of interactive
installation. The curators should be beaten for missing out on that.
Oh well…..

Over all it was a fun evening. At least I could laugh at some of the art.
Some of it maybe even inspired but I havn't come to that conclusion as of
yet.

Tomorrow will be much more fun with the opening of the Armory Fair.
Better Parties.
Friday opens with the Scope Fair.
More Parties.

Lets see how the commercial events stand up to the noncommercial.

More to come.

Cheers,
Lee

on 3/10/04 19:37, curt cloninger at [email protected] wrote:

> 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
>>
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