Re: a bit of

"the music of the future isn't music."
- from the liner notes to "Environments 2 - Tintinnabulation (special low frequency version)"

Hi DQ,

I'll address your critiques in turn:

1.
Proto-conceptual instructionalism (my smarmy made-up name for the genre of work that the "\_ This Concept" Project establishes) differs from mere ideas posted on blogs in several ways:
a. it's not mere ideas posted in blogs
b. it's actual instructions for an art project sans implementation
c. it's on your art radar

2.
For inaction to actively resist something, it need become action, and thus become commodified into the world of implementation. Fool me twice, shame on you. We aim below the mark in order to miss the mark.

3.
Anyway, proto-conceptual instructionalism (or just "instructionalism," as it shall come to be known in art history footnotes of the future) is not inactivity. Inactivity would be thinking of the concepts and not posting them (proto-instructional brain-wavism). By posting the concepts and instructions, We've taken an action. It's just a different kind of action. We've placed conceptual art ideas into the marketplace of conceptual art ideas whilst bypassing all the mucky muck of making some conceptual art thing and getting somebody to show it somewhere and then getting somebody else to talk about it.

4.
Instructionalism is not invisible. Heck, it's freakin' "net art news" (and sad news at that for the conceptual artist going through all the formal implementation machinations in hopes of making "net art news"). From concept to headline at the click of a mouse! Millions of dissatisfied customers can't be wrong. We haven't flooded the conceptual art market yet, but to do so is our concept.

5.
Of course instructionalism involves marketing (what contemporary art worth it's gallery space doesn't!). But this is a new level of art marketing. The instructional proto-object itself collapses the gap between contemporary conceptual art and contemporary conceptual art marketing. Your average contemporary conceptual artists has to pimp herself in a two-step process: a. make the art, and b. market the art. Whereas instructionalism kills several birds in a single post – proto-art pre-object as conceptual art statement as call for collaboration as exhibition catalog essay as promotional marketing tool as conceptual art critique as new genre of anti-anti-art. Now how much would you pay!

I'll be home for Christmans (if only in my dreams),
curt

-

Dairy Queen wrote:

>
> Dear Curt Cloninger,
>
> "We aim to flood the commodified market of the implemented concept
> with unimplemented concepts, thus critiquing and "devaluing" the
> implemented concept."
>
> I am unsure as to how such material would "critique" so-called
> "implemented" concepts, particularly if the only difference between an
> "implemented" and an "unimplemented" concept was the act of
> implementation!
>
> To me, what you're suggesting actually sounds like advertising. A
> smart ad exec comes up with endless ideas and ultimately implements
> very few of them. Those ideas which go unimplemented don't really
> "critique" the ones that make it to fruition, do they?
>
> I would argue that context is very important here. Couldn't it be
> argued that the Web itself, particularly all of its passionate Lefty
> bloggers and opiners, already churns out an endless stream of
> unimplemented ideas on a daily basis? If you're going to deploy
> inaction as a strategy, you have to make it VISIBLE; I would say that
> to critique a given situation or institution, an inaction has to
> RESIST something that is being expected.
>
> DQ