tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96002212024-03-07T11:32:46.706-12:00The Panmodern Feedback LoopThe Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-12395839929923998742013-05-28T04:10:00.000-12:002016-08-19T04:15:05.113-12:00<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://panmodern.com/Mark%20Bloch_Art%20Market_2013.html" target="_blank"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 20.0pt;">Using the Internet
and Social Media Strategies To Penetrate
the International Art Market</span></i></b></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<a href="http://panmodern.com/Mark%20Bloch_Art%20Market_2013.html" target="_blank">An essay, forecast and brief history by </a></div>
<span style="font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><a href="http://panmodern.com/Mark%20Bloch_Art%20Market_2013.html" target="_blank">Mark Bloch<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">CLICK TO READ</span></a></span>The Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-74592220012457555892011-10-24T10:09:00.000-12:002016-08-18T13:55:58.199-12:00Sodahead: A Digital Marketing Analysis<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilAsjtS547d3cppiEkzBrFW4B5eHTDM3sXuFy4cDp6iXKN7GCclvznyNpdWL3DsETKQpzDQN3ER84zHY-KtozmTjMoXWW2AwYEfkalkXD3n2STNUhxTpyG4EEHeKdf2-y2kh08/s1600/appendix-news.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilAsjtS547d3cppiEkzBrFW4B5eHTDM3sXuFy4cDp6iXKN7GCclvznyNpdWL3DsETKQpzDQN3ER84zHY-KtozmTjMoXWW2AwYEfkalkXD3n2STNUhxTpyG4EEHeKdf2-y2kh08/s320/appendix-news.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><h2>
Sodahead News</h2>
Click to enlarge</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">INTRODUCTION/PERSONAL BACKGROUND</span><br />
<br />
<br />
I am interested in possibly starting a company that capitalizes on the interest in trends by both consumers and by corporations. I decided the best way to assess trends might be through a polling site. When I researched the most competitive examples of such sites, Sodahead emerged as the furthest along in this desired direction from my point of view so I have chosen to analyze their business model. This paper will focus on the digital marketing done by Sodahead. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">EXECUTIVE SUMMARY</span><br />
<br />
<br />
Sodahead’s mission is to provide a place for users to share opinions within a social networking site. It also leverages its technology thorough a poll widget. I recommend that they improve their reach by taking greater ownership of the Internet polling landscape via greater visibility. They should improve search engine presence by using paid search for keywords widget, poll, opinion and improve SEO for slogans, trademarks and word associations related to their brand and its polls; improve their Sodahead News (see above) feature and export it to Twitter, Youtube and the media; partner with advertisers and create hundreds of questions regarding their products to openly show the results of an unapologetic advertiser-content partnership policy. Finally, Sodahead should expand from their 18 and under demographic to a more educated, sophisticated user base through increased news and political polling that mimics and seeks to usurp traditional news sites.<br />
<br />
_____________________________________<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitm-2AmK9_b9sUI0NZHgdJFr8ldzI3dtFDt_M2M5AkrnGXluoX0YHbxTJE8h6x7eQfB0-rcUl0ry2DcaiHnh49R1j6bE2IY-o5NO81T1qScfcnbqe4Ub75uWUwzc1hhW2yiToz/s1600/appendix-demographics.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitm-2AmK9_b9sUI0NZHgdJFr8ldzI3dtFDt_M2M5AkrnGXluoX0YHbxTJE8h6x7eQfB0-rcUl0ry2DcaiHnh49R1j6bE2IY-o5NO81T1qScfcnbqe4Ub75uWUwzc1hhW2yiToz/s320/appendix-demographics.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Sodahead, </span>founded in March 2007, is an Encino (Los Angeles), California-based company, with 25 employees, whose self-described mission is to provide a place for users to engage in discussions and meet other “sodaheads.” It also leverages its technology thorough (and evolved as a company from being the maker of) a proprietary poll widget. Sodahead creates community via their opinion based site, <a href="http://sodahead.com/" target="_blank">sodahead.com</a> with the tagline “Opinions. Everybody’s got one.” That was changed in April 2010 from their prior catch-phrase, more related to their name, “What’s bubbling in your head?” after some test marketing in a poll on their site that generated only <a href="http://www.sodahead.com/fun/what-does-everybodys-got-one-make-you-think-of/question-971053/?page=4" target="_blank">63 votes and 145 opinions.</a> Sodahead.com averages about 138K users in US daily and 250K internationally with 21% of their audience under <a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/sodahead%20citing%20Businesswire" target="_blank">age 18</a>. <br />
Sodahead received 2 major bursts of <a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/sodahead%20citing%20Businesswire" target="_blank">venture capital</a>. They received $8.4 million in June ‘08 and $4.25 million in January ‘07. One of the founders of the company is Jason Feffer who was on the executive committee of MySpace and their fourth employee. He helped them launch and grow to <a href="http://Gavin O’Malley, Online Media Daily, “SodaHead Pops Fizzy 'Social Newspaper' Concept”, www.mediapost.com/publications/article/107801/, June 12, 2009" target="_blank">100 million members.</a><br />
The principal competitors to Sodahead are Toluna, FunAdvice, Quora, Formspring, Yahoo! Answers, Zoomerang, and PollDaddy. Zoomerang and PollDaddy both provide polling widgets for blogs, websites, and social networks. In October ‘08 Word Press acquired PollDaddy, an Irish company. That is only signigficant because Sodahead also has a presence on WordPress as a plugin. Zoomerang is significant because they are a competitor if Sodahead were to move into the paid online search area as I will recommend. <br />
Yahoo Answers is often called the company’s main competitor. But Sodahead, targeting larger social networks like Facebook, does not see it that way because Yahoo Answers is not conversation-focused, while they are. “It's trivia-, not opinion-based,” Feffer said about <a href="http://Gavin O’Malley, Online Media Daily, “SodaHead Pops Fizzy 'Social Newspaper' Concept”, www.mediapost.com/publications/article/107801/, June 12, 2009" target="_blank">Yahoo Answers</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>SODAHEAD.COM:</b> 90% of the company’s traffic goes through their well-designed and easily navigatable site. Their web presence is strong and unique. In addition to changing their slogan, a major redesign in June 2010 made graphics and branding a strong point here. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
(They did a significant redesign in June 2010 in which they
told their users “change the way you read and interact with the news
you care about.” They now have an attractive Ask it bar; a Dashboard
with Mail and Help links; users can customize their profile and are
encouranged to use photos called avatars. The site is divided into three
categories- Purple questions, red news stories and teal blog links.The
bottoms of their pages include the ability to link to Facebook, Twitter
and Google plus.)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
User- and internally- created polls provide the content with easily accessible business information for potential advertisers and partners also available.<br />
<br />
<b>SEARCH ENGINE: </b>There is no paid search engine presence for Sodahead. Organic optimization is good for widget-related searches but, understandably, frequently used terms like poll and opinion fared less well unless combined with Sodahead poll topics.<br />
<br />
<b> TWITTER</b> presence for @Sodahead is relatively strong but it could grow significantly with increased participation. Their Twitter page listed 7600 tweets and 22.9 thousand followers. They do about 6 tweets a day with short URL links to their polls.<br />
<br />
<b> FACEBOOK </b>presence is strong. One page which contains their app has 22,795 monthly active users. Users can comment on their site or “go to” the widget. A second Sodahead.com page has 50,440 “like”s. Any Facebook user can post on the page whether or not they are “members” or “like” it.<br />
<br />
On M<b>ySpace, </b>despite being started by a former key employee, or perhaps because of it, Sodahead’s presence is weak. A page said “no recent updates in this category” and they have 1277 friends.<br />
<br />
A search on Google+ for “Sodahead” yielded over 200 responses before I stopped scrolling. Uses of the word in member postings ranged from casual comments to speculation about whether the company brass had Google+ accounts, but the company, like other corporations, does not yet have a user account on the site.<br />
<br />
<b>YOUTUBE</b> user Supricky 06 has several videos averaging about 10,000 views each. <br />
There is a Sodahead overview only has 216 views but it outlines their program in a nutshell and has provided me with demographic information for this paper and indicates where they want to be heading. Another video, found from a search on wn.com, not on Youtube, featured red-carpet interviews with celebrities from the MTV video music awards in Las Vegas in front of a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W8-AJf3BE8&feature=player_embedded#!" target="_blank">Sodahead backdrop</a>. Despite being featured on ABCNews and Fox, no Youtube clips seem to exist of these broadcasts. Thus, opportunities for using the Youtube space abound in many forms.<br />
<br />
<b> MOBILE </b>technology reaches 25K daily visitors with 1 million monthly page views. Options are many on pages showing a Coke ad at the bottom of a m.sodahead.com page.<br />
<br />
<b> OUTSIDE ADVERTISING</b>: While Moat.com revealed no ads found for Sodahead,<br />
the Sodahead widget is featured on television outlets and reportedly receives 40 million impressions per month from ABCNews, including their show Good Morning America as well as Fox News and Business News, Spike TV, and these venues: Mallvision Digital, Technorati, PumpTop TV, and the previously mentioned Wordpress.org, where the sodahead widget is offered in their Plugin category. “Add polls to your blog to create an engaging experience for your audience.” Their site “and major media distribution partners” touted 30 million hits per month for advertisers like Sony and Yoplait but results looked unsatisfactory. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">RECOMMENDATIONS: </span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Sodahead’s reach and effectiveness in the digital space could be greatly increased with some strategically applied effort in a few areas that would require some manpower and revenue but not prohibitively so. I would recommend improved search engine visibility via paid search for keywords widget, poll, opinion (and their plural forms) so that Sodahead could establish themselves as a player in the polling landscape currently dominated by traditional i.e. “scientific” polling and political subject matter in Google’s organic search results. By creating buzz about their poll results, Sodahead could increase page views which in turn could be leveraged for greater credibility for their polling results. I would urge such a path to widen their user base. Sodahead promotes that they have a 18-24 year old audience but their largest demographic is under age 18 (See Demographics graphic at top of this article's Quantcast data.)<br />
<br />
<br />
. I suggest improving SEO for the slogans and trademarks associated with Sodahead including their tagline and any “news” items, past present and future, that are potentially viral. Most importantly: Expand Sodahead News component to quadruple Twitter feeds, create daily Youtube clips, and create media buzz. Create more traditionally-styled news-related polls to improve demographic reach and increase credibility. I would advise that Sodahead mimic Gallup, Rasmussen, Zogby and major news organization activity with branded user-friendly but proudly “unscientific” versions of official polls. In short, there is a huge opportunity here to move into the mainstream opinion landscape using existing technology and parameters unapologetically. Similarly, I would recommend that Sodahead partner with advertisers to create hundreds of questions regarding their products, creating promotions, contests, comparisons, trend news and other marketing strategies that make use of the poll and opinion platform. Sodahead should not be afraid seek out and then trumpet advertiser-content partnerships and their effect on polls. They should unabashedly create attention and therefore a dynamic community by owning the Internet polling space in new and unexpected ways.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Appendix </b></span><br />
<br />
Sodahead is part of pop culture for those who care to notice but it is not always readily apparent via Google search. They have been parodied on cracked.com and quoted by forbes.com. (Justin Bieber poll). In fact, two articles in particular seem to have brought them notoriety in the press: “Public Opinion Agrees Rosie Is Worst Talk Show Host” and “Public Opinion Says Bieber Fever Won't Last Ten Years.”<br />
<br />
The following is some information about Sodahead’s organic presence which seems to be strong in the “widget” areas and in “soda” and with some of their top subjects (Rosie and Bieber) but with needed work to do to move them up on opinion, poll and their tagline:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Searches on google search (term in italics followed by position)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>Sodahead </i></b>1st position</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>Everybody’s got one, </i></b>They rank 37th</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>Opinions everybody’s got one </i></b> they rank 2nd and 4th</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>poll widgets </i></b>5th (Zoomerang was ad 1)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>election poll widget </i></b>9th </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>myspace poll widget </i></b>10th</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>poll widget blogger</b> </i>9th (Zoomerang was ad 1)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>gallup poll widget </i></b>not top10 (Zoomerang only ad)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>presidential poll widget</i></b> 9TH (Zoomerang only ad)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>election poll widget</b> </i>Not listed (Zoomerang only ad)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>2008 election widget</i> </b>Not listed zoomerang No ad</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>electoral map widget</b> </i>Not listed (Zoomerang only ad)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Searches related to <b><i>election vote widget</i> </b>Not listed (Zoomerang 1st ad)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>Widget </i></b>Not in top 100 (Zoomerang was ad 1)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Nothing for 200 entries of <b><i>poll</i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Nothing for 500 entries of <b><i>opinion</i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Nothing for 500 entries of <b><i>opinions</i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>opinion bieber</i> </b>3rd</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>bieber</i></b> (only) no listing top 100</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>soda opinion</i> </b>1st</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>soda poll</i></b> 1st 2nd 3rd</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Bieber soda</b> </i>7th</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>Rosie soda</i></b> 12th</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Rosie poll</b> </i>90th<br />
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6FTnuMwYpgPd5l82K22C6jmqj64auCjw4QA2OjTfeoK9XdQz3tFLn9iltsQM9X0_97bpD17CmCe9TIoNdxO7XB9xanZyRTSGua8v7vm47WE1UiI1Sxiilc6wxIUoSOsNZ_rqw/s1600/appendix-twitter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6FTnuMwYpgPd5l82K22C6jmqj64auCjw4QA2OjTfeoK9XdQz3tFLn9iltsQM9X0_97bpD17CmCe9TIoNdxO7XB9xanZyRTSGua8v7vm47WE1UiI1Sxiilc6wxIUoSOsNZ_rqw/s320/appendix-twitter.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge<br />
<br />
<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5-um-2_qzBgJTfceSz5Vqdlcrfxa4YVWnzy18w8eyyN3qO_8N8BZNgv9YG6Rxr0Ts0QiPNCUw6T_FXTm4q6pFQWDkMiolPvLcvS4kIwtgtSLjBbKaRUVk2TcoZUfOGEf3MWeu/s1600/appendix-youtube.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5-um-2_qzBgJTfceSz5Vqdlcrfxa4YVWnzy18w8eyyN3qO_8N8BZNgv9YG6Rxr0Ts0QiPNCUw6T_FXTm4q6pFQWDkMiolPvLcvS4kIwtgtSLjBbKaRUVk2TcoZUfOGEf3MWeu/s320/appendix-youtube.jpg" width="183" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge<br />
<br />
<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHTsSNyYPNbKX52ldEl7f3-jBPHMSS6G-0dC2rw3f-hI9cLBM0PkzhdYePCI8YCXQBi0T4BgeQtc07ZQ3cUv9Kq534rdK4n7BqSgKYnxpVsJn_nvenWl5If8cahbxD-qAy2YzR/s1600/appendix-mobile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHTsSNyYPNbKX52ldEl7f3-jBPHMSS6G-0dC2rw3f-hI9cLBM0PkzhdYePCI8YCXQBi0T4BgeQtc07ZQ3cUv9Kq534rdK4n7BqSgKYnxpVsJn_nvenWl5If8cahbxD-qAy2YzR/s320/appendix-mobile.jpg" width="283" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Sodahead claimed their site “and major media distribution partners” were responsible for 30 million per month advertisers like Sony and Yoplait but when I clicked around on Yoplait, the member “Yoplait” had created no questions and there were only a few questions by other users such as “Do you enjoy Yoplait?” with 13 opinions and in another, 2 votes for users’ favorite flavor. A question “Yogurt: Dannon, Yoplait, or store brand?” had 29 votes. Similarly, a couple of questions about Sony had 3 or 4 votes with one about game consoles in general, in which Sony was included, generating 167 votes.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR5Fsmu0CjdDf1sHTz2J1AFGcZDyaewzxH0sQoejPcPBoKjYbr6pdbzAEsq-8GGA_E08j7b0KyAWwUfgmE6xy7UeJlTxWXur9TGoOy1w4qr6knahZT8wKi7ihnsO2dTQy3KCOq/s1600/appendix-advertisng.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR5Fsmu0CjdDf1sHTz2J1AFGcZDyaewzxH0sQoejPcPBoKjYbr6pdbzAEsq-8GGA_E08j7b0KyAWwUfgmE6xy7UeJlTxWXur9TGoOy1w4qr6knahZT8wKi7ihnsO2dTQy3KCOq/s320/appendix-advertisng.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />The Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-27213529741173438652010-05-27T17:43:00.003-12:002012-01-05T05:19:09.888-12:00A Timeline of Measuring the Public and Public OpinionDid you ever wonder how we got here? To the age of public opinion polls knowing what everyone thinks about stuff before it even happens? I did. So I looked it up and found out it was not always this way. As a matter of fact, in the grand scheme of things, the very idea of "public opinion" is pretty new and all these polls are even newer. See my website and <a href="http://www.panmodern.com/timelinepublicopinion.htm">this page</a> for a history of public opinion polls and related matters. <br />The URL is http://www.panmodern.com/timelinepublicopinion.htmThe Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-61119486627927093802009-07-08T18:04:00.001-12:002009-07-08T18:14:21.385-12:00Precursors of PanmodernismIn March, 2009, at Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business, I gave a talk about Everett Rogers' work in <em>Diffusion of Innovation,</em> and what it means to Panmodernism. The sound file of the lecture is posted <a href="http://panmodern.com/innovation/" target="_talk">here</a> and the slides follow if you click on the right arrow. There is also an <a href="http://panmodern.com/precursors.html" target="_precursor">accompanying file</a> that illuminate many of these ideas. ---Mark BlochThe Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-24733569175920404982008-07-10T03:14:00.009-12:002009-07-10T01:56:36.627-12:00Information Network Systems Q&A<strong>INFORMATION NETWORK SYSTEMS <br />Linda L. Lambertson: Q & A with Communications Artist Mark Bloch </strong><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6VYwkLV6MhzTF5XulW6tkDo3Y6JANajDk0I79BMajqOHA7_z6vj6ILnCvyBspTLNBpYrk2Ynwm3ln25zp8HEUTJzwq6OLUq9WSPnFhgUicj_uKTVYHaMHQIyvSngT6kwV05ik/s1600-h/ICApaneldiscussion.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 280px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6VYwkLV6MhzTF5XulW6tkDo3Y6JANajDk0I79BMajqOHA7_z6vj6ILnCvyBspTLNBpYrk2Ynwm3ln25zp8HEUTJzwq6OLUq9WSPnFhgUicj_uKTVYHaMHQIyvSngT6kwV05ik/s320/ICApaneldiscussion.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356828742489914546" /></a><br /><em><strong>Linda L. Lambertson, the Education Coordinator and an Associate Curator at the Maine College of Art’s Institute of Contemporary Art has created a show “SEND: Conversations in Evolving Media” lasting June 11 to August 10 which had an Opening Reception on June 20th from 5-8 pm. The show features Artists Meggan Gould, Alex Kahn, Jason Lewis, Young-Hae Chang, Heavy Industries and my late friend Carlo Pittore, whose art about his mentor Bern Porter was featured. Lambertson posed these questions to me and they helped me clarify my opinions on Communications Art prior to an event she has coordinated tonight in conjunction with the show.</strong></em><br /><br /><strong>Linda L. Lambertson: How do you approach/use correspondence and information network systems as part of your practice?</strong><br /><br />Mark Bloch: I see myself as a node, or temporary endpoint in a network web. I receive and send information. For the info I send on from elsewhere, I am a conduit. This is a very important part of mail art. I used to be afraid to send the information on but i didn't realize that in an information system, unlike a normal commodity system, if I have information and I give you information you have more and I don't have less. We mustn't fear sharing information. It will make us all rich. Malthus said there wasn't enough to go around when it came to goods in the world. I am not sure if he was right but it caused a panic, for countries to hoard what they had, it led to a lot of the fear and suspicion and greed that we see today in economic systems. Surely this is NOT true of information.<br /><br />I created the term Storàge to encompass what gets stuck at my node. Artists love storage. We store our art as if it was something noble but there is nothing noble about it. We must let our art flow out into the world. We must send it out like our children to take a fantastic journey.<br /><br />One of the new models for the Internet is giving stuff away for free and then becoming famous as a result and eventually charging for something else or for advertising etc. To trust that by creating something good and sending it out, it will come back to us. Mail artists have been doing that for years.<br /><br />I want to hear what others are doing. I use the networks to take the information I have and send it out into the world and let people know what I am doing and hear about them.<br /><br /><strong>LL: Evolution of the form, from basic print media, to Dada, Fluxus, to mail art, to internet: Has it really changed?</strong><br /><br />MB: The Italian Fututusts, like Fluxus, used the mail to stay in touch… to complete mundane tasks by communicating by mail. The Dadaists did less utilitarian mail art that, like all their art, didn't necessarily make sense. That used to shock but now art that doesn't make sense is not shocking. Our society has embraced Dada. Television and rock and roll music are full of non-sequitors. The Internet is a combination of both. Some internet art is practical, some is just wacky. Dada invented the wacky art to confront a wacky society. Now our society is so used to being wacky that it accepts even the wacky art as normal, the same way it accepts its own wacky behavior, it accepts wacky artist contributions as un-remarkable. It could be tolerance but it is probably something more akin to numbness.<br /><br />Also important to form is money. Money was involved with mail via stamps. Each piece was taxed. With the Internet we pay to join the network and then get unlimited use. This relatively inexpensive aspect of the Internet has yet to be explored fully.<br /><br /><strong>LL: The nature of correspondence art: action vs. object… Are these documents of a moment that was art? And anonymity and personalization- how do these key factors alter a conversation’s potential?</strong><br /><br />MB: Action versus object and personalization? Speaking of the relatively inexpensive aspect of the Internet being yet to be explored, in the early 1990s I tried to get people to use the Internet to download art, change it and re-post it. Then others could do the same with THAT art. People did not have the resources to do so then. Or the know-how. Today they do. I should try that again. I wanted to focus on the process, using gif and jpg files as objects to be downloaded then sent into the 0's and 1's of the Internet. Dissolving them as objects, if they ever existed it all, and transforming them into pure process. But people didn’t know how to scan their art objects or create digital art from scratch. I have had Photoshop and other art making computer programs since the mid 80s. I guess other people have that ability now. Somehow they are able to create images and upload them with greater ease. I hope this keeps spreading.<br /><br />As for anonymity, if I was a dog, a dictator, an unpopular president, a rock star, how would my words be different if they were anonymous? If Paul Mc Cartney is on Facebook and nobody knows, how does it affect his communications? I watched a movie the other day: "Elvis Meets Nixon." In it, Elvis walked around the Haight Ashbury and nobody cared. He looked like everybody else-- dressed weird in a cape and people just said, "Hi, man." They didn't know he was Elvis. On the other hand, George Harrison was the only Beatle to do the same—-walk around the Haight in the 60s. He was mobbed by the crowd. It got bigger and bigger as he walked. He was getting scared. He went without a team, just him and another guy. Eventually he had to beat it out of there. So there is anonymity and there is anonymity. Anonymity allows freedom. For people who are not as public as they would like to be, anonymity is a bad thing. Something to be overcome. Anonymity equals invisibility. I invented Storàge to mock my own tendencies in this direction. <br /><br /><strong>LL: Public and private simultaneity: how do you see the relationship of “cultural consciousness” and individual perception, as it relates to network and correspondence art? Public art “movements” have occurred cyclically throughout the last century. How does this relate to cultural climates?</strong><br /><br />MB: Public vs. private communications. When a person says “Hi Mom” on TV they are breaking the law. Broadcast TV is made to reach everyone. It casts out a blanket of communication that everyone is supposed to be able to receive equally. Technically, “Hi Mom” is point to point communications on Broadcast TV and is therefore illegal.<br /><br />I’ve written about “Proud Mary” which is the societal machine that chews up art movements and eats them. It shits out the results and the public consumes that. It used to be more automatic. Today there is a more varied array of fecal matter being produced by the Proud Mary machine. In fact. some of it is not getting eaten at all, it is just moving from producer to the consumer without Mary sucking out the nutrients. This is a much more healthy process. There is a more splintered approach to mass media these days and it is getting more extreme. It is possible for fringe movements to dominate consciousness and completely avoid what is going on in the big networks, by the major publishers, the big record labels etc. In fact those giants have become irrelevant. That kind of behemoth-dominated culture no longer flies.<br /><br />The current cultural climate has no major dominant molder of attitudes. What molds it is the increasingly-splintered media and the multi-faceted approach to culture; it doesn't matter what people consume, just that everyone consumes OR DON'T CONSUME what they want and it needn't match everyone else or even anyone else. People can mix and match according to their individual needs and likes.<br /><br />I’ve thought about the cyclical movements of the 20th century a lot and how they build on each other, resulting in either a real or imagined “arc” of “progress” moving in a direction. I have my opinions about where it is leading, if anywhere. Lately I tend to think it is leading toward the splintering of culture and toward cultural Balkanization. But this flies right in the face of an opposite international “racially” motivated trend toward actual Balkanization-- At a time where the history of the world can be seen as constantly moving away from that, away from race, away from the differences between people. The current political trend toward nationalism and Balkanization seems to me like a last ditch effort to preserve some really old human stuff that I have never really understood and that I think we will eventually outgrow but not without some serious growing pains. I am more inclined to encourage cross-cultural blending. If we all started out as separate tribes, we are naturally all growing together into one big tribe-- and we always have been. So if we can overcome this caveman mentality, the future will embody both trends at once--a world with people being organized by their interests and likes rather than by their race or ethnicity.<br /><br /><strong>LL: Navigation of systems: How can this be used or seen as a radical act? How do the system and the navigation process determine formal structure? Systems contextualize...</strong><br /><br />MB: Remember what I said before. It is radical simply BECAUSE it moves people from the behemoth-based media to something more personal and individually designed. Also, when the big electronics companies offered us hardware to help us violate copyright laws, VCR's, computers, tape machines, they gave us a license to steal and SURPRISE--we did it. It is radical to mash up and make acid jazz and recombine other people's copyrighted materials but only in a society that holds "all rights reserved" as an outmoded symbol of ownership. <br /><br />And the media determine the way we navigate so with a TV we navigate with the remote. With the internet we navigate with the mouse. The click. In the future all the media will grow together. I have a hard time believing the Kindle that Amazon is developing will be the way we read books in the future if it is not in the same box as an i-phone or a mini-lap-top.<br /><br />Did you know that when the people at Xerox PARC developed the mouse they got the idea by watching very young babies choose what they wanted? They point and reach for what they want. That realization lead to the mouse. Eventually everything will be within reach and we won’t even require a mouse as a tool to navigate. We will be our own interface.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguG6Jngm10utViQCMGwHeXctMNOYxdi8FYIAlHMvTF-Kgy2Vo3KlGS10Ltet5yXRqfsIO9fJkfZFbGP960F8o1jLexHPKh_YtQ4Z50V4b0P5Hgqgot8NOkh07zBOstjGYkXcd8/s1600-h/send+show+whole.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 236px; height: 177px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguG6Jngm10utViQCMGwHeXctMNOYxdi8FYIAlHMvTF-Kgy2Vo3KlGS10Ltet5yXRqfsIO9fJkfZFbGP960F8o1jLexHPKh_YtQ4Z50V4b0P5Hgqgot8NOkh07zBOstjGYkXcd8/s320/send+show+whole.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356825415221629586" /></a><br /><strong>LL: How are the works in SEND an examination of context? How do you consider the factor of shifting context in your own practice?</strong><br /><br />MB: It is interesting that correspondence art is lumped in with this other art in SEND. I haven't seen SEND so I don't know. But I do know that mailart used a network system to create a network mentality that existed for 40 years before the Internet made it possible. Zine culture and cassette culture got on board in the 80s because it was a system that worked and had its own paths and practices already carved out. When the Internet came along, it ended up using some of the same grooves whether they evolved naturally and independently or as a result of overlap and influence. Communications systems tend to resemble each other. In fact I would say they grow to resemble each other as they evolve.<br /><br /><strong>LL: Information saturation: Sound bytes, icons, texting, Google-- Is less more? With so much information available, there is an inherent conflict between immediate gratification and surface information vs. depth and qualitative research. What do you see as potential widespread problems in communication networks? What do you see as the idealistic potential?</strong><br /><br />MB: There is clearly too much information in the world. The Fluxus artist Robert Filliou addressed this with his concept of "The Eternal Network." Mail artists love to confuse their mail art network with his Eternal Network and they do go together well, but I believe that they are two separate things. Filliou was onto something larger. He knew there was way too much info for any one person to know or use so he proposed the Eternal Network as a way for us to combine forces to digest this giant growing glut of information, facts, figures, images. It is even more true today with us drowning in our sea of endless files than it was in the late 1960s and early 1970s when he was talking about it. But to limit information creation is unnatural and counter-productive. Any given piece of information must be seen as available but not essential. The old school behemoth culture is more about gobbling up whatever you can and that mentality lingers in today’s society and it is not necessary. If you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet every once in a while, you are free to boogie 'til you puke. But if you LIVE in an all-you-can-eat buffet, you can eat sensibly, nibbling as needed. I have a Greek-American friend who constantly puts out little bowls of food as we sit around talking. She tells me this is a Greek tradition dating back to when people picked figs and olives off of trees as they talked: No need to engage in a big gorge-fest when nibbling is more pleasant and does the trick.<br /><br /><strong>LL: Language as art object: Politics and rhetoric- Audiovisual properties for emphasis/audience manipulation are used in very sophisticated ways for commercial, political, and artistic purposes becoming? How is this changing the ways artists create visual messages?</strong><br /><br />MB: The TV commercial is the most sophisticated art form ever invented. It uses all the art forms that movies use, plus a big extra: mind control. Steven Spielberg has worked this into his movies when he controls our emotions. His movies are programmed to make us cry here and laugh there. I suppose they all do, but some are better than this than others. TV commercials do that as their number one behavior. They are <em>designed</em> to control our minds. They take ideas and symbols and transform them into actions by us. TV Networks sell US as the commodity in the forms of eyeballs to the advertisers because together they assume that a certain percentage of us will go out and do the behaviors they want us to do. 27 per cent will buy beer. 19 percent will use this soap when they need soap. They use numbers to back up their findings. It used to be vague now it is more sophisticated that ever. With the internet, advertising is even bigger because they can measure our behavior via clicks minute by minute. They know what we do because they know what we click on it. The old Nielsen ratings were a joke compared to the precision of the Internet analytics. This has all made marketing king.<br /><br />Do we really need to talk about political advertising? One promising thing is that this year we will get to see if Barak Obama, by pretending not to play the game, can emasculate the Republican attack machine. Sometimes it seems to be working-- like by just deflecting every attack as NOT being about CHANGE, Obama has de-programmed the electorate. This has interesting possilitites. We need to do this sort of re-programming as much as possible. The fresher people can come to any sort of communication whether it be about art or commerce, the better off we will be. We can enjoy or at least experience things more if our responses are less predictable and more "real." What is real authenticity? Some years ago I proposed the theory of the <em>Internal Network</em> as a supplement to Filliou’s <em>Eternal Network</em>. Each person must consult their inner network of voices, archetypes and parts of the whole person and come up with their own integrated sense of authenticity.<br /><br /><strong>LL: How sophisticated are audiences? Mark of the hand/mark of the machine- both are human, but not always perceived as such. What are your views and feelings about both?</strong><br /><br />MB: The machine is part of us. If people do mail art just for the sense of smell and the tactile nature of a postcard or other art object, they are really fetishizing something of the past. The machine is everywhere. Itr mediates our experiences and has since the age of mechanical reproduction that Benjamin spoke about. Smell and the tactile are important potential elements in a communication just as the speed of delivery is. We prefer Fed Ex over the mail because of speed and we prefer the Internet over Fed Ex because it is faster still. But the Internet cannot deliver a box. Yet. They can compress information. How long until we get those units on “Star Trek” that create food that magically pops out of a wall? In the past it probably would have been difficult to conceive of money coming out of a slot in the wall like the ATM machine. Yet we all do it today. I remember at one point--quite a long time ago, actually-- I knew who was old and who was young because the young people had never set foot in a bank and I had. Now no one needs to set foot in a bank yet there is one on every corner. But that is because they are symbols of the dying money culture. The banks have created the branch office as a giant billboard for the fact that they still control your cash and have no intention of relinquishing. What event will have to take place before them taking a cut of every transaction is recognized for what it is? Or is it necessary because they are the ones that build and maintain the ATMs?<br /><br />And by the way, if they can track every penny of every transaction via PIN numbers and ATM cards, how come we still don’t have a voting machine that everyone can use? Believe me, if counting votes was as important as counting money, they wouldn't miss a single ballot.<br /><br />Some day people will have sex with robots. Will human interaction be necessary? It is more cumbersome to deal with actual people. They talk back. They don't just agree and obey. But it is more rewarding. The intimacy possible with people is not possible with machines and hopefully intimacy will not disappear although already it is out of fashion.<br /><br /><strong>LL: Bern Porter said, “The bomb splintered language, turned the tower of Babel into a shadow.”</strong><br /><br />Are you sure he said it? Maybe he just found it imprinted on a discarded car muffler.The Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-55945185682820915052007-11-02T00:23:00.000-12:002007-11-02T00:38:32.872-12:00The Web Log BacklogI have decided, after letting this Blog lay dormant for a couple years, to begin to post things here I have been thinking about. At first it will be old stuff I cut out of newspapers or elsewjhere on the web or stuff masquerading as intelligent thought that I came up with myself.<br /><br />I was waiting to perfect my ideas before posting them here, but now I realize that is exactly what a blog is NOT supposed to be about. <br /><br />So I will join the club and shoot from the hip like the other kids.<br /><br />So below is a thing I wrote in October 2006 inspired by a book I received in the mail from Vittore Baroni in Italy. It was about the mail artist and my long time correspondent David "Oz" Zack. I started rambling about Zack and then about networks and nodes and communication theory. My limited view of it.<br /><br />But these are things I am interested in. So in the interest of moving forward, and in the interest of COMMUNICATING, I will begin using this Web Log format to post little entires and try to clear out my "backlog" of philosophical tidbits.<br /><br />In other words, after years of resistance, I finally will admit that a "blog" is not the same thing as a web site. They are not the same. A web site is what I wanted to create- a well-honed, polished presentation of information. Instead, I will use the blog idea- a work-in-progess diary-like posting of thoughts -as-information that are not necessarily fully formed, but nonetheless worhty of entering the world wide Info-stream that the Internet has become. It is an akashic record of humanity and my thoughts and musings are just as valid as anyone elses, right?<br /><br />My resistance came form the fact that everyting gets so hyped these days, I was suspicious of this media frenzy about the "Blogosphere." But I can see now that some of the hype is warranted. This may just be the beginning of something I predicted a long time ago: that in the future everyone will become thier own broadcasting station. And it has come to pass.<br /><br />And ablog IS just a website, but it is a certain kind of website, and I see now that it can help me to use this format, so welcome back to the Panmodern Feedback Loop, a work still in progress.The Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-74949696213652565762007-11-02T00:20:00.000-12:002007-11-02T00:21:05.671-12:00Web Log-- October 25 2006node n<br />1. the place on a plant stem where a leaf is attached or has been attached<br />2. a point where lines meet or intersect in a diagram or graph<br />3. either of the two points where an orbit, for example, that of a planet, crosses the ecliptic plane<br />4. a terminal or other point in a computer network where a message can be created, received, or repeated<br /><br />Tal·mud n<br />the collection of ancient Jewish writings that makes up the basis of Jewish religious law, consisting of the early scriptural interpretations (Mishnah) and the later commentaries on them (Gemara)<br /><br /><br />By Mark Bloch<br /><br />The Book Of Oz by David Zack. Zack was basically out of his mind. But he left a nice legend. I like the way his Correspondence Novels --these stream of consciousness tales that that were very haphazard --told a story. Kind of random, but communicative, just the same. This is how the net is, it’s very asynchronous and non-linear. In the past we’ve tended to think of things as synchronous and linear. It’s not so anymore. Not necessary anymore. So you got your network. I wanted to be included in Vittore Baroni’s Zack issue. But just like the Talmud, I can comment on the commentary, as the others have done. So that’s what I intend to do. I intend to comment on the commentary of those guys. Create an ongoing text, a living text that’s what hypertext is supposed to be and that’s what mail art was and still is. That is very much in line with the flavor of the Correspondence Novels.<br /><br />Ray Johnson was the opposite of Duchamp. That was one of the things Marcel Duchamp did that was underrated. He made it possible for all his works to be collected under one roof in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Ray Johnson did the opposite. He spread his work all over the world, to make it impossible for anyone to ever be able to write fully the full biography or the full complete CV of RJ. This type of idea--of an endless, infinite information field--leads us to Robert Filliou’s idea of the Eternal Network. Now while the term Eternal Network has indeed been abused by mail artists, it is a useful concept to think about in terms of an endless information field reaching out in all directions. This is where it relates to what I was talking about. Because that was Filliou’s idea: an endless, infinite sprawling network. Filliou’s idea was that since no one could ever know everything about art, it had to be a group activity. And so who better to do this than mail artists and since we can’t define mail artists… mail artists equals everyone. <br /><br />Because just like I was at the center of my own network before I was a mail artist, in exactly the same way, I’m in the center of my own network as a mail artist. We all move through life meeting other people and this is our network and we can only assimilate as much information as is in our network and is in our short term memory at any one time. As Albert Einstein said, never remember anything that is already written down so you don’t have to commit it to your short-term memory. You can write it down and you can visit it from time to time. Filliou was into the un-doable-ness of the world, the undoableness that’s perfectly OK. We need to learn to live with that. After I lost all my computer data it was painful but it brings up issues of the art of Storáge, which are basically about the uncapturability of the entire world. And it isn’t just the uncapturability but also the reticence to divulge ones own node on the network. In other words, we all have these networks and we receive things from everyone we’ve ever met at the same time. We also are transmitting to everyone and storáge has to do with the things we do; with the things we receive; and also the things we generate and don’t send. Places that do a lot of receiving and sending tend to be the more active nodes.<br /><br />This is good. To be an active node is a good thing. If you are an active node it means you generate activity. You generate a lot of information for the net. The net- is there a goal of this network? I think not. I think it’s a world without a goal. It is its own reward. Its information is not the reason for the net, the info is a bi-product as info moves between the nodes. Info can move between the nodes. Or it can reside at the nodes and can even get stuck at nodes and it often does, especially in my case. But I guess the spiritual takes over when the info is moving rapidly between the nodes at such a speed that it’s indistinguishable from life-- if that makes any sense. It’s like a spiritual energy is generated by the movement of information. And the connection between people is what it is all about. It’s all about the connections between people. <br /><br />There’s always gonna be a place for stuff for which we have no concept, no idea what it is; stuff that is uncategorizable but we can look at it later. I have really good stuff- tons and tons of stuff. It’s all good. Organization of info is completely arbitrary in every way. It depends on each individual person and how they want to organize the info that they send and receive. This idea, just like the concept of history, implies there is some objectivity to it but we know there is not. There is no history. There is no absolute take on anything. There’s just people trying to make individual sense of their individual node and the information that’s flowing into it and out of it.<br /><br />Its amazing the shit I have been able to save and not to do anything about. I am a stockpile for irrelevant information and desire. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I am. The sad case of my particular node is… first of all let us acknowledge that it doesn’t have to stay this way, it’s going to get better. However at the moment it’s a little screwy. Part of what this is about is straightening out my little node and turning it into something wonderful again. Not that it ever was wonderful. Its always been convoluted. I’m sick of it and I don’t deserve it. <br /><br />Every time I think I’ve lost something I find versions of it. This is good. Not everything but some of the stuff and this is a beautiful thing. But at least some of it exists in hard copy. I have amazing people in my life that say amazing things. As one of them said when everything got deleted, “when you write the stuff the second time don’t bother entering it all in this time.” It’s like she was reading my mind. Just enter parts that are finished. That advice unnerved me because that is not my style. It unnerved me but it was good advice.<br /><br />That box in storage the other day is so unbelievable. I can’t even say it was painful because it was so far beyond pain. It’s just the irony of me never doing anything. Not even the irony but the obviousness of that fact. So I don’t do anything and I end up stuck with all this backlog of shit. So there a lot of it was, in a box. Proof of my activity in collecting it and proof of my inactivity by not acting on it. <br /><br />So I have to look at it all and I have to beat myself up for never having done anything with it. It’s just so far beyond what I deserve. I really do deserve the very best. We all do. Instead I've sentenced myself to a box of uncompleted tasks which I then look back on and I wonder about and I lament over and I marvel at, but mostly I just let it sit there and I don't do anything with it. If you were to look at my life in terms of networking and network nodes my net node is a dead letter office, baby, this is not an exaggeration. This is the god’s honest truth. My net node. But on the other hand I keep finding things that are amazing. Things I thought I’d never find and quit looking for--then here they are. I gave up. Yet here they all are. <br /><br />I look in the box. I say “Here’s something important. It could have changed my life.”<br /><br />I guess that’s the end of this text until further notice. I should take all of the network books and texts and put it all in one big book about long distance networking art. Then send it out long distance and be done with it.The Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-1119051494574666982005-06-17T11:37:00.001-12:002012-01-05T05:14:01.543-12:00After Mail Art Comes the Internetby Mark Bloch. <b>Reprinted from NEW OBSERVATIONS magazine. </b><br /><p><br /><br />Is it a coincidence that both international mail art and the Internet reached a critical mass in the late 1960s? </p><br /><p> Mail art was expanding exponentially as a new generation of artists all over the world practiced ideas developed a decade earlier about artists linking via the postal system, <i>both within</i> <i>and beyond</i> their geographical limitations.</p><br /><p> In March ‘68, artists Robert Filliou and George Brecht emerged from a “sort of workshop” and “international center of permanent creation” in the south of France called <i>La Cedille qui Sourit</i> and announced they “had developed the concept of the <i>F</i>ê<i>te Permanente</i> or <i>Eternal Network,</i> as we chose to translate it into English, which we think should allow us to spread this spirit more efficiently than before… we announced our intentions and sent it to our numerous correspondents… The artist must realize also that his is part of a wider network… going on all around him all the time in all parts of the world.”</p><br /><p>“My mail box lit up,” said Anna Banana of her entrée the early 70s, “the network just suddenly went ‘pow’… From these… mostly artists who knew each other… all hell broke loose. <i>File</i> started publishing... Everyone who saw it was like, ‘This is neat! Let’s do it.’”</p><br /><p>Meanwhile, a contract for the development of what would become the Internet was awarded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in fall 1968. A year later, the first pieces of the ARPANET were in place. Researchers in several universities, military bases and government labs used it to exchange files and electronic mail and to provide remote login to each other’s sites.</p><br /><p>Was this activity the parallel development of two diverse communications media whose time had come or was the mail art network an earlier form of what we now call “cyberspace”? Fluxus artist Geoff Hendricks, who was (and is) also a link to a community emerging at Rutgers University in the late 1950s suggests that:</p> <blockquote> “People today are using the Internet and web sites and so forth very extensively for the communication of art ideas… it’s more like correspondence art and what was happening with Fluxus ... a perceiving of… the end of easel painting and modernism and that whole aspect of art... realizing that there’s a <i>another</i> form of communication between artists and <i>another</i> way to express art ideas… it’s almost like all of this is in <i>anticipation</i> of the Internet. It’s using that slightly older form of the post to exchange ideas but realizing that <i>this</i> is the communication that we need to have today: <i>to talk to each other, to reach each other.</i> ” </blockquote> <br /><p>Was the increasing irrelevancy of the tangible art object in favor of a collective reaching out <i>to other artists by artists</i> in a non-hierarchical social structure, at that moment in time, the beginning of the changes we now see being experienced by the culture at large?</p><br /><p>In 1945, the Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development under FDR, Vannevar Bush (1890-1974), published a groundbreaking article,<b> </b><i>"As We May Think" </i>in <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> magazine. Bush introduced his conception of the “Memex” machine- an “easily accessible, individually configurable storehouse of knowledge.” Imagining an analog computer, Bush was unknowingly laying the groundwork for hypertext, a system for “multiple authorship, a blurring of the author and reader functions, multiple reading paths, and extended works with diffuse boundaries.” Ironically, he abandoned his research when the digital computer was invented but his ideas were adapted by Ted Nelson (b. 1937) who coined the phrase “hypertext” in the mid-60’s.</p><br /><p>In 1943, Ray Johnson began an illustrated correspondence with a hometown Detroit artist. Shortly thereafter, Johnson headed for the experimental <i>Black Mountain College</i> where he added a new circle of friends to accompany him on his five-decade journey exploring long distance art communication, eventually called <i>the New York Correspondence School</i>. When Johnson and others, including <i>Black Mountain</i> teacher John Cage, moved to New York, actually living across the hall from each other in 1948, the small intersecting spheres of post-war artists began to coalesce. Cage’s 1958 classes at the <i>New School</i> led to Fluxus and Happenings while Johnson continued to build his own overlapping network. </p><br /><p>Two years before the first Fluxus Festival in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1962, Johnson (who by 1955 claimed a mailing list of 200 people) held a “nothing,” his response to the “happenings” of Alan Kaprow (himself part of the Rutgers group) at George Maciunas’ Manhattan <i>AG Gallery</i>. Maciunas, in turn, had been influenced by a similar program of gigs at Yoko Ono’s downtown loft. Thus, by the time Johnson’s “school” and Maciunas’ Fluxus were named in ‘62, all the pieces were in place for a cross-fertilization of iconoclastic ideas already enveloping American artists by word of mouth <i>and</i> mail.</p><br /><p>The ambitious Maciunas next created Fluxus newsletters to unite like-minded artists around the goals of his collective: to “fuse the cadres of cultural, social and political revolutionaries into united front and action.” The newsletters played a vital role in bridging two continents as the Fluxfest took form in Wiesbaden. </p><br /><p>There, and also at the 1962 <i>Misfits </i>exhibition in London, the already complex collection of American nodes led by Maciunas intersected with Daniel Spoerri, founder of the experimental magazine <i>Material, </i>and part of the French <i>New Realism</i> group, and his friends Dieter Rot, Emmett Williams, Ben Vautier and Filliou. </p><br /><p>That same year, Johnson corresponded with Christo in France and when Ray’s friend Henry Martin moved to Italy in ‘65, the Correspondence School meandered permanently into Europe. Meanwhile, Maciunas contacted Joseph Beuys in ’63 as Nam June Paik learned of Fluxus from Mieko Shiomi in Japan and established contact. </p><br /><p>Brecht and Robert Watts, meeting informally at a restaurant near Rutgers, masterminded their inter-disciplinary 1963 Yam Festival, including mail events. By ’65, Spoerri had moved Stateside while Brecht sold his belongings, eventually heading with Filliou to the south of France. Books published by Dick Higgins’ <i>Something Else Press</i>, including one of Johnson’s correspondence and one of Spoerri’s games with chance, also grew the circle.<br /></p><p>Whether it was called art or not, whether it began with Mallarme, the Beats, McLuhan or some unidentified form of spontaneous combustion, the importance of “community” was in the air by 1968. As the student movement stirred uneasily around the world, the stage was now set for new tactics to take hold.</p><br /><p> Once created, the ARPANET quietly transformed over the next two decades. In 1975 the worldwide communication system was transferred from ARPA to the Department of Defense, which partitioned it in 1983 into two connected networks that agreed to pass traffic to each other. The National Science Foundation NSFNET for experimental research eventually became the dominant backbone of the Internet.</p><br /><p>Using the post and not wires, in the late ‘60s a young Flux-driven Ken Friedman joined forces with a pair of Canadian nodes, Vancouver’s <i>Image Bank </i>and Toronto’s <i>General Idea</i>, publisher of<i> File Megazine,</i> to bring the “artist address list” center stage. Borrowing the concept and some addresses from Friedman and Johnson, what began as a postcard show became a request list for and finally a conduit from North America into South America via visual poetry circles and via Beuys and grassroots political networks into East Germany, Hungary, and beyond. (Today, <i>Flash Art</i> ’s annual <i>Art Diary</i> is a direct outgrowth of this activity.)</p><br /><p>Soon after, articles on the interweaving networks <i>in Art in America</i> and <i>Rolling Stone</i> brought “mail art” to a generation of art students as still more publications did later to sci-fi and punk music enthusiasts. Thus did this gift-driven, do-it-yourself sensibility explode in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Yet, as a cultural strategy, it was just beginning. </p><br /><p>Realizing that data communication was crucial to scientific research, in 1987, the National Science Foundation insured that network communications would be available for US scientists and engineers. By mid-summer 1988 a larger NSFNET backbone was in place; the original shut down and disconnected. Then, in 1991, with the Internet growing beyond science and academia, a policy of commercialization and privatization by the US government began, including, for the first time, charging institutions for connections.</p><br /><p>In 1982, I had put a computer-generated sticker on my magazine <i>Panmag</i>’s Issue #1: “Computers are the next logical step in mail art.” After exposure to both Mac’s and DOS based operating systems in my job as a multimedia producer, in 1985 I embarked on combining correspondence with computer generated art. I bought my first Macintosh in 1986. I exchanged computer works with Charles Françoise in Belgium and an American artist appropriately named Gene Laughter. I also recall a magazine called <i>DooDa</i> Florida that used a Mac. I’m sure there were others infiltrating the network. </p><br /><p>On November 11, 1989, during a visit to Françoise’s home in Liege, I physically saw and participated in his newly created RATOS (Research in Art and Telecommunication) BBS. Two days later, Françoise, Rod Summers and I met in Maastricht, Netherlands for the First Computer Mailart Congress. Summers, a Dutch veteran of audiocassette exchanges, used a Sinclair, Acorn and finally an Amiga 4000 computer to create artistbook catalogues in the ‘80s.</p><br /><p>When I returned to the US I logged on to Factsheet Five’s and then the WELL, where I checked out John Cage’s <i>First Meeting of the Satie Society</i> and connected with Fred Truck and Carl Loeffler, mail artists I had met in San Francisco in 1984. In 1990, I established a teleconferencing system of my own called <i>Panscan</i>. Part of the Echo BBS in New York, it was visited by mail artists including Françoise, Guy Bleus, Xexoxial Endarchy, Mark Pawson, and Robert Delford Brown, a correspondent of Johnson’s since the early 1960s.</p><br /><p>In April 1990, Chuck Welch and I connected our modems together and Chuck sent his first electronic file, something I had done with <i>RATOS </i>and others the previous December. By 1995, Welch had one-upped me, establishing<i> EMMA: the Electronic Museum of Mail Art</i>, the first mail art web site. Anxious to catch up, I posted my hypertext tribute to Ray Johnson about a week later. Johnson drowned earlier that year and I had been slowly building an HTML-based bio of Ray that I planned to be the first mail art web site on the burgeoning web. </p><br /><p> Since then, of course, a thousand mail art-related sites have bloomed. The number of mail artists with email has increased a handful in 1995 to thousands today. Entire discussion groups now debate the pros and cons of mail art, what constitutes a Fluxus artist and how many can dance on the head of a pin.</p><br /><p>Finding yesterday’s (and tomorrow’s) long-distance art superstars is only a click away on today’s net. I used email to arrange a face to face meeting with AA Bronson, one third of the influential <i>General Idea </i>team that created <i>File Megazine</i> in 1972. I had never met or corresponded with either him or his two late partners but the Internet and a mutual friend now brought Bronson and I together. In a talk we had in February 2000, Bronson said:</p> <blockquote> <br /><p>“It’s a whole book to discuss about all the various threads of what was going on. I think it-- let’s call it the “electronic revolution”-- is already in progress <i>without</i> there being an electronic technology in place. So, the whole idea of networking on very horizontal rather than vertical structures. For example, the ideas of co-ops and communes... is roughly equivalent to the concept of the Internet. It’s about a very horizontal, free-flow sort of structure. It’s not based on a hierarchy and it’s not based on equality per se and it’s not based on… a sort of Marxist notion. It’s much more about free-form networking that operates in a very organic sort of way. So the Correspondence Art was very much like an illustration of that. It’s like the Internet… it’s <i>exactly</i> like the Internet in its structure and in the way it happened and the way it changed and shifted all the time. </p><p> “And it’s quite interesting the way these little banks of images pulled out of the popular culture were collected and then recycled-- very much the way imagery passes through the Internet, through everybody’s emails-- especially in the pornographic aspect of the network. The way people scan images out of magazines and trade them with each other and set up home web sites that have big banks of a particular kind of imagery and that sort of thing. So it’s very similar. I think it was, and is, the feeling of the time. It was appearing with a small group of people who were, in a way, more conceptually advanced. It was just part of the their nature. And it’s really now that it’s appearing in the culture at large. Buckminster Fuller always talked about a 25 year lag between something being invented and something appearing in the culture at large and that’s sort of how correspondence was. It was something for just a few people and now in the form of the Internet, it’s just sort of everyday activity for everybody.” </p></blockquote><br /><p>Bronson and several others changed direction in 1974 when the mainstream magazine articles appeared and artists stopped using the image request lists and just sending anything to anybody-- or everybody. Was that a precursor to today’s email “spam”? Are web sites the electronic equivalent of “zines”? Did Ray Johnson’s first “add to and send to” in 1962 lead to the Linux “open source” operating system: given away freely, not subject to copyright, with programmers encouraged to add to and improve? </p><br /><p>Observing the fluidity of random interactions as “people passed information… standing at tables by the serving hatch, where coffee and croissants were served” helped Tim Berners-Lee mastermind the organizing principals of his Worldwide Web. What better testimonial is there to the ultimate expediency of Dada’s adherence to the laws of chance? The Internet required a detour into the realm of science to be created, but it remains an art form.</p><br /><p>As it reaches a level of total saturation around the world, can electronic communication avoid pitfalls and capitalize on its strengths? Whether premonition, precursor, or just a goofy first cousin, mail art’s rich history represents a valuable inspiration and under-explored resource for the Internet.</p><br /><br /><p>Copyright Mark Bloch. <b>Reprinted from NEW OBSERVATIONS magazine. </b></p><br /><br /><br /><b><p> Note: Mark Bloch wishes to acknowledge the following sources: Emmett Williams and Ann Noel, editors<i>, Mr. Fluxus: A Collective Portrait of George Maciunas 1931-1978</i>, 1997, Thames and Hudson, London; Catherine Guidis and John Farmer, editors, <i>Ray Johnson: Correspondences</i>, Flammarion and Wexner Ctr. for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio,1999; Joan Marter, editor<i>, Off Limits: Rutgers University and the Avant-Garde, 1957-1963</i> The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ, 1999; Douglas E. Comer<i>, Internetworking with TCP/IP, Volume 1,Third Edition</i>, Prentice Hall Inc.<i> ,</i> 1995; Sharla Sava, Clive Robertson, editors<i>, Robert Filliou: From Political to Poetical Economy</i>, Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C., 1995 as well as conversations with Anna Banana, AA Bronson, Ken Friedman, Geoff Hendricks, Michael Morris, and Daniel Spoerri, and email correspondences with Tim Berners-Lee, Judith Hoffberg, Henry Martin and others. </p></b>The Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com91tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-1107309848893733472005-01-31T13:57:00.000-12:002005-02-01T14:17:04.493-12:00Networking Theory: Old Ways New Ways <i> I wrote this in the mid-1980's when I was doing some researching on Networks. It was before I got into computer teleconferencing. I think it applies both to the teleconferencing and BBS's of the early 90s as well as the Eternal Mail Art Network which I thought I was writing about at the time.
<br /><br> <br>
<br />Alot of this was rewritten and paraphrased "research" I got from another magazine. Yes I changed it but when I find it I will give them credit where due. I have the original somewhere. I seem to recall this also appeared in a Vittore Baroni mail art publication of some kind in Italy.</i>
<br />
<br /></p><p><b>Introduction</b>
<br />
<br /></p><p>There is a choice that we each must make. It is a choice between an Old Way, which is very familiar to us; and a New Way, which is not as familiar, but of which we are also aware. The Old Way is set up according to a hierarchy, with a president, or some other leader, sitting at the top of a heap, with those below him subservient. The individual lies at the bottom of this heap, buried by the system and everybody in it. In fact, in this Old Way of working, the system itself is thg most important thing. "We The People" the system was created to serve are secondary not only to those near the top of the heap, but to the system itself.
<br />
<br /></p><p> A New Way, called Networking, puts every individual at the center of their own system, which is created to serve that individual alone, freeing them to give or take according to their own needs. The Networking Way is really not new at all. There have always been networks. A person's individual friends and contacts are, in effect, their Network. What is new, however, is that many people all over the world are recognizing networking as an alternative way of doing things that gets results. Many of these people are in touch with each other, thus networks grow together, becoming stronger.
<br />
<br /></p><p> Networks are more effective than the bureucratic, hierarchical systems that have dominated the world since "democracy" was taken up as a battlecry to thwart the rule of kings and monarchs. Democracy soon turned into another kind of tyrranny with the individual subservient to the bureaucracy itself. So networking has sprung up as a useful replacement for any kind of officialdom at all. In other words, networking is for individuals and individuals only- there is no need for an authority in a networking system, hence- true "democracy."
<br />
<br /></p><p> </p><p> Though networks are non-bureacratic, they still offer an effective and useful organizational structure. Each person is at the center of his or her own network. Because networks are polycentric and not monocentric, it is like a hydra with many heads. Meanwhile, bureaucracies die, leaving new ones struggling to take their place.
<br />
<br /></p><p> To those who need to defend bureaucracy, networks are perceived as a conspiracy, if they exist at all. Those of us who use networks recognize them as a functional necessity for our new global society. We live in an information environment now. Those who process information most efficiently will survive. Until recently, corporations and governments had a monopoly on information. What we are witnessing for the first time in history, is that individuals working together in a networking system are gaining control of information. We are weaving patterns in an attempt to decentralize, de-bureaucratize and therefore, rehumanize the planet.
<br />
<br /></p><p> One interesting paradox of all this is that networking seems to work according to the same ideals that free enterprise is based on, but have long since been forgotten. Indeed, capitalism itself has been usurped by the suffocating effects of bureaucracy. Self-interest transformed into personally satisfying mutuality is an idea whose time has come- again!
<br />
<br /></p><p> Malthus convinced us some time ago that the resources of the world are limited. Whether you accept this or not, the fact remains that you have what other people want and other people have what you want. Each person is a creative individual, possessing unlimited resourses and capable of making their own decisions. While the hierarchy desperately tries to hang on, the rest of us are waking up to the fact that we may have something better to offer the world than our potential as simple laborers. We have the ability to transform the world and re-see our society as a supra-national unity that cuts across socio-economic boundaries, regardless of gender, age and ethnicity.
<br />
<br /></p><p> The world has a potential to provide fruit for everyone, but it requires great care and responsibility to keep the garden growing. We must learn that when we weave our patterns through the network, we must do so responsibly. The Global Network is a tool that we must use carefully in order to be effective. It is not a status symbol or something to flaunt. It is a necessity that we must jointly nurture.
<br />
<br /></p><p> <b>How Do Networks Work?</b>
<br />
<br /></p><p> The Old Way consisted of towers of bureaucracy, ready to fall at any moment. The keys to networking are not in these vertically- constructed hierarchies, but rather in a vast web that spreads itself across the planet. It is a thin veil of organization that gets its strength from its horizontal linkages, the inner-connectivity of its members. At the center of your network is you, and concentric rings reach out to the ends of the planet, linking you to all the other individual networks. You may not know Person C, but you are connected with Person B and B is connected to C. Thus, we find that it is, indeed, a small world. Ancestry or social status are not the criteria for playing this game. There are a multitude of criteria, in fact, which make the relationships of a networking system more complex than that of the hierarchy. The leader of one group is a member of another. Members of a group are permitted to be from different backgrounds, and differences of opinion are encouraged, not suppressed.
<br />
<br /></p><p> In fact, it is this complex nature of connections in networking that make it interesting (and functional). The bonds that bring people together might not necessarily be in only one area. There may be a number of connective tissues. Unlike the Old Way, Networking views the individual as the complex person that he or she is, not a faceless, numbered servant of the system. As mentioned above, participants of a network needn't agree. It is possible to shift alliances within the network at will. While allegiance to the system is critical in a hierarchy, getting things done is the key to a network. Relationships tend to be sociable rather than official in nature. The atmosphere is flexible, less regimented. Thus the boundaries and responsibilities of members is more fluid. There is a more unconstrained character to the activities of a network, as opposed to the dogmatic rules of the Old Way.
<br />
<br /></p><p> Participants relate to each other as equals, rather than in terms of status. This seems to promote the flow of information. Status symbols obstruct the flow of ideas, so the absence of concepts like "subordinate" and "boss" keep the focus on pertinent information and away from the superfluous. People can come and go as they please, there are no rules, no superstars, just courtesy among equals. The most important quality of the network as opposed to the Old Way is is that somehow diversity is preserved, not destroyed. Each member of a network is above all, the leader of his own private network, insuring individuality. The whole concept of leadership is different in a network system. There is no single, paramount leader. New leaders pop out of nowhere as needs arise individually and collectively. Leaders can influence decisions, but do not make them alone for an entire group. In this way, decisions can be made, even by people who do not agree on other issues. Differences of opinion are not frowned upon, they are simply recognized as one element of a truly "democratic" situation. Those that do not share certain assumptions are not prohibited from interacting. Pertinent information, not individuals, rule the network system.
<br />
<br /></p><p> <b>How do networks manifest themselves?</b>
<br />
<br /></p><p> The most appealing quality of networking is that it is flexible, adaptible to change. We all know that change is fundamental to life, but few bureaucracies acknowledge this. Thus, the entire network ebbs and flows with each microcosmic bit of activity. Failure is minimized by this ability of the network to assimilate change. The cross links inherent in the network structure insure that what is failure to one part of the network is useful to another. Thus failure is "absorbed." While the addition of one new member can increase the inner-connectivity a thousand-fold, people can drop out of a network with little effect. The connections that their presence created will survive.
<br />
<br /></p><p> The process can be tailored to fit the character of the network and its goals. People can use the network how they want and when they want. This asynchronous nature of networking is one of the tangible ways in which the individual can exercize his or her own individuality when it comes to work methods. Participantsy, but geographically. The more diverse the networking community, the wider the resourcres and vice versa. As the networking concept grows, networks combine. In turn, those combine to form super-networks. It is conceivable that a network could exist someday (perhaps it already exists) that would include everyone in the world. At any rate, established networks can't help but combine with new ones with individuals remaining the key to bridging the gaps. As the networks grow, so do the options available to the participants.
<br />
<br /></p><p> <b>Why networking?</b>
<br />
<br /></p><p> Networks are useful to those who choose to use them and therefore require no explanation. The activity is its own justification. Nevertheless, some reasons people get involved in networking? To disiminate news and data; to connect those with a need for information with those that have the required resources; to exchange information; to bring together diverse people with similar concerns or interests; to bring together similar people with diverse interests; to define shared problems; to arrive at inter- organizational cooperation; to avoid dependence on big business and/ or institutions; to mobilize unused resourses; to generate innovation; to exchange ideas; to work together on projects; to receive feedback; to exchange opinions; to unite for a common goal; to learn or to teach; to search for compromise; to gain a concensus or majority; to find commitment; to improve decisions; or simply to relieve boredom.
<br />
<br /></p><p> Everyone wants to make rational decisions about what will facilitate their own needs and wants, and networking allows the freedom to do this. Suddenly we find ourselves in control of our own destiny, not manipulated by powerful hierarchies that are insenstive to human needs. Are there oppressive powers in a network system? Coalitions between sub-groups of the network prevent control by any one faction, thus the power-hungry are easily avoided. Self- sustaining segments in opposition prevent takeover of the nftwork by any one group.
<br />
<br /></p><p> <b>When does networking work (best)?</b>
<br />
<br /></p><p> The networking idea is adaptable to change. People are often here today gone tomorrow. A process-oriented system is needed that can absorb that kind of constant evolution. Networks work best when people don't take things as literally, leaving room for interpretation and negotiation; when people are sensitive to timing and intuition; when people think clearly and listen carefully; when people try to be useful, contributing as much as they take from the network; when people increase the connections in the network, bringing people together. There is potency in numbers. A "more the merrier" attitude is essential in a system where more possibilities means greater effectiveness. Each participant must bring their own complex web of connections with them to the network. Each member must build the strength of the network by making the fabric stronger, not by tearing it down through petty jealousies and fears. A multi-faceted, unselfish approach works better than tunnelvision. People who are knowledgeable about their communities and other resourses; people who want to learn or teach; people who accept the unpredictable influence of and consequences of chance; people who aren't afraid to take risks; people who are looking to fulfill personal goals first and career and academic goals second: all these people are welcome and needed in a network.
<br />
<br /></p><p> A networker chooses the road less traveled, the avenue that is not safe, not soothing, not comfortable. We must be willing to be more didactic, to have opinions and make our own moral observations. We must learn to trust our own opinions while not being a slave to them. We must be willing to be more than a reflection of the state, the corporation, the media. We must be willing to point to a higher reality- truth- and transcend the petty world of the Old Way- the hierarchy- that creates a dehumanizing gap between the truth and our daily lives for the sake of the hierarchy itself. We must rejuvenate our passion and our motivation and reject the manufactured needs of the corporate structure that attempts to sell us temporary happiness for the price of whatever they happen to be selling. In short we must regain control over our own lives. We must reclaim our lost wholeness. We can do this by meeting our own needs directly, through networking.
<br />
<br /></p><p> Everyone has skills and knowledge to share. Get in a position where others know what your skills and knowledge (as well as your needs) are. Chances are there is someone who wants to barter with you. The astounding thing is that in an an age when apathy is king and selfishness is the status quo, millions of people are more than willing to share. The trend toward networking is is a vote of confidence by individuals for a better way than the Old Way. An Old Way that increasingly ignores commitmment to human and social values and seems to foster alienation and escapism.
<br />
<br /></p><p> The world must be saved from suicide and the only way that this can happen is through the courage, audacity, regeneration and commitment of individuals, not faceless hierarchies. We must insist on the human need to do what we want, when we want, without hurting others and without dependence on consumerism or ethnicity. We must re-take the human sphere. Networking is the way to do it. The networking concept is not limited to any gender, age group, or nationality. It cuts across socio-economic boundaries. Networking is applicable everywhere, to anyone. You can be from a small village or a major metropolis. You can live in the East or the West or the Third World. All that is necessary is an understanding of your own needs, an honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses, and an interest in a New Way.
<br />
<br /></p><p>
<br />
<br /></p><p>
<br />The Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com103tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-1103347192209112942004-12-17T09:19:00.004-12:002009-03-24T08:52:17.121-12:00"How to Start an Avant-Garde" by Robert Ray<strong><em>How to Start an Avant-Garde</em> is an essay by Professor Robert Ray who teaches English and Film Studies in Florida. He is the author of <em>A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930–1980</em> (Princeton University Press); <em>The Avant-Garde Finds Andy Hardy</em> (Harvard University Press); and <em>How a Film Theory Got Lost, and Other Mysteries in Cultural Studies</em> (Indiana University Press). He teaches courses in film studies, contemporary criticism, and intellectual history, with a particular interest in experimental critical practice. He holds a PhD from Indiana University, an MBA from Harvard, a JD from the University of Virginia, and an AB from Princeton. </strong><br /><h2 align="center">How to Start an Avant-Garde </h2><p>Although its demise is periodically announced—most recently at the hands of that all-purpose assassin-without-passport, “Theory”—the avant-garde survives as an attitude, a temptation, and even an aesthetic practice. Confronted with media culture's voracious powers of assimilation, which can, within a few years, popularize something such as Punk Rock by transforming it first into “New Wave” and later (and more profitably) into “Alternative,” the avant-garde seems left without its defining characteristic, its <i>refusé</i> status. </p><br /><p>Indeed, late-twentieth-century Western culture, wired from birth to grave, requires that we reformulate two famous avant-garde maxims: Gertrude Stein's dismissal of Oakland (“There is no there there”) and Jean-Luc Godard's definition of film (“Photography is truth, and the cinema is truth twenty-four times a second”). In the land of fax machines, cellular phones, and cable TV, “There is no outside there,” and we live under the regime of “Ideology 180,000 times a second.” The avant-garde, of course, has not remained unaffected by this new environment, characterized most of all by <i>speed</i>. But to assume that increasingly rapid co-option will destroy the avant-garde ignores how much the avant-garde itself has, throughout its history, promoted its own acceptance. </p><br /><p>From the start, its preferred analogy was to science, where the route from pure research to applied technology is not only a matter of course, but also a <i>raison d'etre </i>for the whole enterprise. From this perspective, the avant-gardist's typical complaint about assimilation seems misguided. When the Clash's Joe Strummer denounced fraternity parties' use of “Rock the Casbah” as mindless dance music, he seemed like a chemist protesting the use of his ideas for something as ordinary (and useful) as, let us say, laundry detergent. </p><br /><p>The Impressionists, on the other hand, the <span class="goohl0"><b>first avant-garde</b></span>, understood almost immediately that assimilation was a necessary goal. As a result, those wanting to start a new avant-garde should study their strategies, especially those designed to deal with the one great problem that, since Impressionism, has dictated the shape of the art world—the problem of <i>the Gap</i>. As a movement, Impressionism arrived at a moment when art (and, by implication, almost any innovative activity) encountered a new set of circumstances. In particular, for the first time in history, the art world began to assume that between the introduction of a new style and its acceptance by the public, a gap would inevitably exist. </p><p>As Jerrold Seigel summarizes: <i>The Impressionists' self-conscious experimentalism, their exploration of the conditions and implications of artistic production in a modern market setting, and their sense that they bore the burden of an unavoidable opposition between innovation in art and society's hostile incomprehension—all made their experience paradigmatic.</i> </p><p>There is another, more lyrical, way of putting the matter: No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept. And they refuse to accept it for a very simple reason and that is that they do not have to accept it for any reason... In the case of the arts it is very definite. Those who are creating the modern composition authentically are naturally only of importance when they are dead because by that time the modern composition having become past is classified and the description of it is classical. That is the reason why the creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic, there is hardly a moment in between and it is really too bad very much too bad naturally for the creator but also very much too bad for the enjoyer... </p><p>For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. Although Gertrude Stein argued that an innovator's contemporaries dismiss his work simply because “they do not have to accept it for any reason,” the standard art history account of the matter runs somewhat differently. In the wake of the French Revolution, the decline of the stable patronage system, which had rested on a small sophisticated audience, ready to commission and purchase art, resulted in an entirely new audience for painting—the bourgeoisie, newly come to power (both politically and financially) but less sophisticated, less secure about its own taste. Such an audience (the prototype of the generalist lost in a world of specialization) will inevitably prove conservative, will inevitably lag behind the increasingly rapid stylistic innovations, stimulated in part by this very system (which, after all, is a marketplace, thriving on novelty) and its technology (particularly photography, the technology intervening most directly into painting's realm). </p><br /><p>Mass taste, in other words, must be educated to accept what it does not already know. Of course, most mass art (Hollywood, for example) avoids taking on that project and merely reproduces variations of familiar forms. But unless avant-garde artists remain content with posthumous success (represented as the only “genuine” kind by Balzac's <i>Lost Illusions</i>, a principal source of the avant-garde's myth), they must work to reduce the gap between the introduction and acceptance of their work. </p><br /><p>How do they go about doing so? How do you start an avant-garde? Although the avant-garde carries the reputation of irresponsible rebellion, it, in fact, amounts to the humanities' equivalent of science's pure research. Having derived its name from the military (particularly, from the term for the advance troops entrusted with opening holes in the enemy position) and having repeatedly committed itself to scientifically conceived projects (e.g., Zola's “Experimental Novel,” Breton's “Surrealist Manifesto”), the avant-garde has always had its practical side. Indeed, in many ways, it amounts to a laboratory of creativity itself. Thus, the question “How do you start an avant-garde?” has implications for any undertaking where innovation is valuable. Not surprisingly, sociologists of science have long been interested in this question. More to the point here, a large, although scattered, body of writing has developed around the problem of the gap between the introduction and acceptance of modern art. </p><br /><p>Tom Wolfe's <i>Painted Word</i>, witty and cynical, takes up journalistically what Francis Haskell's “Enemies of Modern Art” and Rosen and Zemer's “Ideology of the Licked Surface: Official Art” treat learnedly. In what follows, although I will refer to those sources, I will draw primarily on what remains the best discussion of the Impressionists' role in the new art world, Harrison and Cynthia White's <i>Canvases and Careers</i>. That book makes clear that even if you are a great artist, if you want art to become not a hobby but a paying career, you must attend to the issue of <i>the Gap</i>. In fact, you should follow <i>The Eight Rules for Starting an Avant-Garde</i>:</p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in -1in 0pt 45pt"><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"></p></span><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"><p>1. <i>Collaboration</i>.</span></p><span style="font-family:Times;">Outsiders working together have a better chance of imposing themselves than does someone working alone. Think of Romanticism (Coleridge and Wordsworth, Goethe and Schiller), Cubism (Picasso and Braque), Surrealism (Breton, Eluard, and Aragon), Deconstruction (Derrida, DeMan, and Miller), Punk Rock (the Sex Pistols, the Clash). Other members of your group will refer to you, cite you, make contacts for you, and collaboration typically proves aesthetically stimulating as well. From the outset, the Impressionists understood this principle. As early as 1864, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Bazille painted together in the forest of Fontainebleau, and subsequently they shared Parisian studios or apartments. Even Manet, a relative loner among the Impressionists, maintained an informal salon at the Café Guerbois, where writers (especially Zola) and other artists (e.g., the photographer Nadar) mixed with the painters. </span><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in -1in 0pt 45pt"><span style="font-family:Times;"></p></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in -1in 0pt 45pt"><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"></p></span><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"><p>2. <i>The Importance of the Name</i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Times;">A crucial factor in the Impressionists' success was the movement's name, which Harrison and Cynthia White point out “was in the great tradition of rebel names. Thrown at them init ially as a gibe to provide a convenient handle to insult them, it was adopted by the group in defiance and for want of a better term and made into a winning pennant” (111). “Impressionism” aptly describes much of their work; the name was easy to remember and carried with it the theoretical justification for a style that seemed unfinished, especially when compared to the <i>fini</i> or “licked” surface of their official, accepted contemporaries, the <i>Pompiers</i>. </p></span><span style="font-family:Times;"><p>No avant-garde group has ever achieved major acceptance without a catchy name: think of Futurism, Structuralism, Situationism, the Yale School, Fauvism, <i>La Nouvelle Vague</i>, and even Dada, a parody of such names, meaningless, or at least intended to be. The name provides a group identity. Using the “Impressionists,” Zola and other critics lumped the individual painters together, and they began to think of themselves as a more coherent group than at first they had actually been. The name provided a hook for critics and dealers, furthering publicity: to review one of the Impressionists was to review them all. The final stage of this group identity generally results in the formation of some official institute or association: the Impressionists formed their own joint stock company, which staged their exhibitions. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in -1in 0pt 45pt" align="left"><span style="font-family:Times;"></p></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in -1in 0pt 45pt" align="left"><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"></p></span><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"><p>3. <i>The Star</i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Times;">Avant-garde movements need a key figure whose glamour and prolificness will attract and focus the attention of outsiders. The Impressionists had Manet—rich, witty, articulate, and shocking, while also being, by virtue of his training and disposition, the most clearly linked to the great traditions of French painting. Other movements had their own stars:<br /><br /></p></span><p align="center">Cubism: Picasso<br />Futurism: Marinetti<br />The Bauhaus: Gropius<br />Modernism (musical branch): Stravinsky<br />Surrealism: Breton<br />Relativity: Einstein<br />Situationism: Debord<br />Abstract Expressionism: Pollock<br />Pop Art: Warhol<br /><i>La Nouvelle Vague:</i> Godard<br />Punk Rock: Johnny Rotten<br />Structuralism: Lévi-Strauss<br />Semiotics: Barthes<br />Deconstruction: Derrida<br />Rap: Public Enemy </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in -1in 0pt 45pt"><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"></p></span><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"><p>4. <i>Traditional Training</i>. </span></p><span style="font-family:Times;">Even if you eventually reject its precepts, some encounters with a profession's more or less official schools give you a sense of what to expect. With that work behind you, you have a better chance of justifying your own deviations by demonstrating that you have chosen to ignore standards that you have mastered. With the bourgeois audience, nothing helped Picasso's reputation more than his masterful skills in conventional drawing. Almost all of the Impressionists (Cezanne is the great exception) studied at either the École des Beaux-Arts or privately with academic painters. Sometimes the definition of “traditional training” may prove less obvious. With Punk Rock, for example, formal music study mattered far less than extensive experience in working bands: thus, for all its self-propagated myth of amateurism, Punk's important bands always contained pros. Yes, Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious were novices, but drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones were certainly not. </span><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in -1in 0pt 45pt"><span style="font-family:Times;"></p></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in -1in 0pt 45pt"><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"></p></span><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"><p>5. <i>The Concept of the Career</i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Times;">The Impressionists demonstrate the effectiveness of refocusing one's attention away from individual paintings, executed for specific occasions designated by a patron, to a whole career and its evolution. Thinking in terms of a career means constructing a narrative that will make sense of an artist's development. <i>The Gap</i>, of course, makes such career thinking more subtle, a matter for continual renegotiation. Adopting the extreme long view amounts to accepting a success that will be, at best, posthumous. </p></span><span style="font-family:Times;"><p>Stendhal's famous line “I have drawn a lottery ticket whose first prize amounts to this: to be read in 1935” represents the test case. As a publicity gambit, it is perfect, wittily establishing the frame of reference most beneficial to his difficult writing: given wider circulation in his own lifetime, it might even have helped him sell more books. The extent to which Stendhal was content with this ultimate payoff, however, was a direct function of his having other sources of income. An avant-gardist without such independent means should probably adopt Andy Warhol's approach instead: “Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in -1in 0pt 45pt"><span style="font-family:Times;"></p></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in -1in 0pt 45pt"><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"></p></span><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"><p>6. <i>New Avenues for Distribution and Exhibition</i>.</span></p><span style="font-family:Times;">The Impressionists' <i>Salons des Refusés</i>, group shows staged by dealers, and one-man exhibitions are all the equivalent of the new record labels (Punk's Stiff and Rough Trade) and new journals (e.g., <i>October</i>, <i>Camera Obscura</i>, <i>Diacritics</i>, <i>Substance</i>) that provide places where off-beat work can appear when the official channels (the major labels, <i>PMLA</i>) are closed. Durand-Ruel, the principal Impressionist dealer, founded his own journal. He also opened new markets for art, particularly in America, by redefining art as an investment, a speculation with possibilities of appreciation, thereby enabling sales to that class which understood money more than painting: the bourgeoisie. </span><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in -1in 0pt 45pt"><span style="font-family:Times;"></p></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in -1in 0pt 45pt"><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"></p></span><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"><p>7. <i>Reconceptualization of the Division of Labor</i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Times;">In the French Academy system, painters (at least those enthroned in the <i>Institut</i>) also functioned as judges, selecting the works that appeared in the annual salons. They both painted and set the standards for new painting. Rapidly detecting this conflict of interest, which discouraged the reception of even slightly different work, the Impressionists, perhaps imitating the burgeoning industrial reyolution surrounding them, divided the labor: painters stuck to painting, leaving to dealers and critics the task of assessment.</p></span><span style="font-family:Times;"><p>In many ways, the avant-garde's history represents a constant tinkering with the division of labor, usually in ways that challenge contemporary arrangements. Thus, with the factory system established as the norm, Duchamp chose to act not only as an artist, but also as his own dealer and critic, thereby recombining the roles the Impressionists had divided. Duchamp's example has become the postmodern standard, with artist/theoretician/publicist figures such as Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Barbara Kruger, and Sherrie Levine. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in -1in 0pt 45pt"><span style="font-family:Times;"></p></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in -1in 0pt 45pt"><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"></p></span><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:16;"><p>8. <i>The Role of Theory and Publicity</i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Times;">In <i>The Painted Word</i>, Tom Wolfe decries Abstract Expressionism's reliance on the criticism that sustained it. That symbiotic relationship, however, began with Impressionism and the period of the new, insecure purchaser. Twentieth-century art made that relationship permanent. requiring, as T. S. Eliot put it, that an innovative artist help create the taste by which his work will be judged. New styles typically demand a <i>new critical idea</i>. Impressionism, as many art historians have observed, marked a shift from arguments about subject matter (deemphasized by many Impressionists) to ones about style. If, according to Wolfe, the key to Abstract Expressionism's success was the concept of <i>flatness</i> (which justified nonfigurative painting to a skeptical public), Manet et al. benefited from the concepts of “the impression” and “the painting of modern life,” terms that legitimized both the sketchy, unfinished appearance of many Impressionist paintings and their everyday, nonclassical subjects. </p></span><br /><p>Even more important, writers favorable to the Impressionists redefined the notion of the artist, who became less an artisan, working for traditional patrons, than a romantic outsider, speculating on future recognition. This new critical idea turned conventional standards upside down. By recasting the Academy as a group of outdated stuffed shirts, vestiges of the <i>ancien regime</i>'s hostility toward bourgeois economic and social power, the Impressionists' critics effectively identified the artist with his new client and made rejection by the academy itself the sign of worth. This move proved decisive. </p><br /><p>The most brilliant discussion of its effects appear in Francis Haskell's “Enemies of Modern Art,” which turns on Impressionism's critical reception. Haskell wants to remind us how ugly those paintings once seemed. He quotes Albert Wolff, an important critic, reviewing the second Impressionist exhibition of 1876<i>: The rue Le Peletier is out of luck. After the burning down of the Opera, here is a new disaster which has struck the district. An exhibition said to be of painting has just opened at the gallery of Durand-Ruel. The harmless passer-by, attracted by the flags which decorate the façade, goes in and is confronted by a cruel spectacle. Five or six fanatics, one of them a woman, an unfortunate group struck by the mania of ambition, have met there to exhibit their works. Some people split their sides with laughter when they see these things, but I feel heartbroken. These so-called artists call themselves</i> “intransigeants,” <i>“Impressionists.” They take the canvas, paints and brushes, fling something on at random and hope for the best. (207)</i></p><br /><p>In both its tone and judgment, this passage seems as disastrous as a more famous one that appeared in the <i>New York Times</i> in 1956, when television critic Jack Gould reviewed the <i>Milton Berle Show</i> appearance of Elvis Presley: <i>Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. His specialty is rhythm songs which he renders in an undistinguished whine; his phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner's aria in a bathtub. For the ear, he is an unutterable bore, not nearly so talented as Frank Sinatra back in the latter's rather hysterical days at the Paramount Theater.</i></p><br /><p>This kind of mistake began with Impressionism, the event that revealed how the gap between the introduction and acceptance of radically new art had become systemic. In “The Ideology of the Licked Surface: Official Art,” Rosen and Zemer dramatize this point by concentrating on a single year, 1874, and the painters missing from the Palais du Luxembourg, then France's official museum of modern art: no Manet, no Monet, no Renoir, no Degas, no Cezanne—indeed no painters whom we now consider important: “Over the course of the century,” Rosen and Zemer write, “a gap had opened like a trench between the museum and the new art” (218) so that by 1874, the curators had entirely excluded precisely that body of work that future generations would come to regard as the best of its time. Some of Impressionism's critics were ambivalent about their own responses to these works, whose newness broke with the very forms the writers themselves had previously worked to establish. </p><br /><p>Indeed, Impressionism prompted its most scrupulous reviewer to articulate, perhaps for the first time, one of the two great dangers facing any critic of any avant-garde: the possibility that one might simply be too old to understand what had arrived, the problem that we might call “critical senility.” </p><br /><p>Reviewing the 1868 salon show, Theophile Gautier, one of the best critics of his generation, diagnosed himself: <i>Faced with this paradox in painting, one may give the impression—even if one does not admit the charge—of being frightened lest one be dismissed as a philistine, a bourgeois, a Joseph Prudhomme, a cretin with a fancy for miniatures and copies of paintings on porcelain, worse still, as an old fogey who sees some merit in David's </i>Rape of the Sabines<i>. One clutches at oneself, so to speak, in terror, one runs one's hand over one's stomach or one's skull, wondering if one has grown pot-bellied or bald, incapable of understanding the audacities of the young.</i> ... <i>One reminds oneself of the antipathy, the horror aroused some 30 years ago by the paintings of Delacroix, Decamps, Boulanger, Scheffer, Colot, and Rousseau, for so long excluded from the Salon. ... Those who are honest with themselves, when they consider these disturbing precedents, wonder whether it is ever possible to understand anything in art other than the works of the generation of which one is a contemporary, in other words the generation that came of age when one came of age oneself. ... It is conceivable that the pictures of Courbet, Manet, Monet, and others of their ilk conceal beauties that elude us, with our old romantic manes already shot with silver threads.</i> </p><br /><p>In this new environment, criticism becomes precarious. In 1881 an event occurred that upped the stakes: less than two years before his death, for a rather ordinary effort by his own standards (a painting called <i>M. Pertuiset, the Lion Hunter</i>), Manet won the salon's second-place medal. A few months later, thanks to a friend in the Ministry of Arts, he also received the <i>Legion d'honneur</i>. The importance of these circumstances, in Francis Haskell's opinion, cannot be overstated: Manet, the greatest enemy the Academy had ever known, Manet who had been mocked as no other artist ever before him: Manet was now honoured by the Academy, decorated by the State, accepted (however grudgingly) as an artist of major significance. </p><p>Everything will now be acceptable at the Salons: that is the implication that is drawn from all this. ... The acknowledgement that there had been a war, but that the critics had (so to speak) lost it and that it was in any case now over, is perhaps the single most important prelude to the development of what we now think of as modern art. (217-218) From this point on, critics grow wary.</p><br /><p>Aware of previous mistakes, reviewers become increasingly afraid to condemn anything, since anything might turn out to be the next Manet. Hence, the second of modern criticism's two great dangers, what Max Ernst called “<i>overcomprehension</i>” or “the waning of indignation”: having propagated the notions of rejection and incomprehensibility as promises of ultimate value, the avant-garde had protected itself from bad reviews. In initiating this move, Impressionism prefigures postmodernism' s diminished concern for the work of art itself, as opposed to the contexts in which such work might occur. </p><br /><p>With the rise of what Gerard Genette has called “the paratext,” meaning and value become highly negotiable, just like commodities, just like paintings themselves. And theory and publicity turn out to be the principal tools for influencing the ways in which art will acquire meaning. In the age of Madonna, publicity's importance should be obvious. The Impressionists, however, over a century ago, recognized its role in starting an avant-garde. By the second half of the twentieth century, strange things had become possible. </p><br /><p>As I discussed in chapter 3 [<em>of his book, <strong>How a film theory got lost and other mysteries in cultural studies</strong> -</em>editor]<em> </em>, years after his films' release, Douglas Sirk could now completely transform their meaning simply by saying something about them, thereby achieving a Midas-like alchemy that converted forgotten commercial melodramas into celebrated critical “subversions.” </p><br /><span style="font-family:Times;"><p><span style="font-size:130%;">Since the time when Impressionism first showed us how to start an avant-garde, the role of what has come to be known as Theory has grown enormously. Bohemianism, after all, was from the start what the Goncourt brothers called “a freemasonry of publicity.” Indeed, the avant-garde attitude, which since Impressionism has appeared in painting, music, architecture, literature, and film, has begun to enter the realm of criticism itself. The formally experimental work of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida offers us the early signs of this move. In retrospect, this development seems inevitable. Given the avant-garde's urgent need to contract <i>the Gap</i>, it had to depend on theory as its advocate. Sooner or later, having invented the script for this project, the supporting player would have to take center stage. We have reached that moment now. </span></span></p><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Times;"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span style="font-family:Times;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>The Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-1119159082615112452004-12-15T17:30:00.000-12:002005-06-18T17:59:11.516-12:00High Art, Low Art<b> In 1990, there was a show at the Museum of Modern Art called HIGH/LOW and I wrote this piece about it in FACTSHEET FIVE. It is a follow up to the previous month’s piece on what I called “Proud Mary”.</b> <br /><br /><P>The current show at the Museum of Modern Art here in New York is called “High/Low” and it attempts to show that from “just after World War I...direct borrowings from everyday ephemera gave artists a special way to confront the look and feel of modern society.” Now, big deal, right? I mean I think this is something that most of us with a little intelligence, and many without, take for granted. The idea that “High” and “Low” form a continuum is certainly nothing new to those of us that have lived through a decade or three in this century. But one of this exhibition’s many flaws is that it does not see the relationship between “high“ and ” low“ culture as a continuum at all. To the creators of this show, ” low“ art means advertising, caricature, comics, graffiti and billboards- pop culture in general; while ” high“ art means the stuff that gets shown in institutions like MOMA. I guess we’re supposed to think that the world of ” low“ art didn’t even exist- until now, of course- because they hadn’t acknowledged it. But to me and everyone else I know that has seen this show, this exhibition is one big moot (exclamation) point. We can move from Soul Train to Sol LeWit without a lot of discussion. By even positing this theory, the Museum is fragmenting into two worlds that which is really only one. This show is a ridiculous contradiction in terms. It is unnecessary to separate the high from the low, and in fact, to do so is to play a ” high“ art game that has been going on for years and holds little interest for the rest of us.<br /><br />Why, then, should I bother talking about it? Because not only does it set up a false boundary between the high and the low, but it also leaves ” us“ out of it altogether. This is significant. This exhibition does not address those of ” us“ who both accept and reject certain aspects of both ” high“ and ” low“ culture and in fact are doing something much more interesting than either. We live our lives without a division, we borrow freely from anything that is useful to us, be it ” everyday ephemera“ or the ” innovative styles“ of modern art. We reject both worlds in favor of a third world: the do-it-yourself, self-publishing activity that are part of a tradition which I call the Sub-Modern. This loose-knit Sub-Modern ” community“ is where the ” high“ art world goes fishing for new talent. But our little pond doesn’t really need a name. In fact, like MOMA does with High/Low, to name it is to to ruin it, to categorize it, to destroy it, to assure it’s co-optation by the Proud Mary machine I talked about in my last column (Factsheet Five # 37). Nevertheless, I’ll refer to us as the Sub-Moderns now and I’ll tell you why later.<br /><br />But first, let’s talk about just why this show is so ridiculous. Perhaps the reason that it limits itself to the worlds of painting and sculpture is an acknowldgement that this show, while considered ” daring“ by the New York art mafia, is in fact being presented at least 50 years too late. After all, media such as television, cinema, rock’n’roll and the rest weren’t at the forefront of our consciousness as they are now. By not addressing these most fascinating aspects of pop culture, perhaps they are saying all this hoopla about High/Low isn’t all that relevant due to the advent of today’s ” high tech“ society in which all the world is only as far away as your remote control device. But I doubt it. Unable to drop the obsession with the plastic arts, they predictably position themselves just a little too ” high“ and skimp on the ” low,“ taking themselves, as always, far too seriously. By 1936 Max Ernst had begun ” to transform into dramas revealing my most secret desires what were previously only banal pages of advertising.“ Status quo today. Ernst and his dada contemporaries felt that mail order catologues and such ” brought together...elements of figuration so distant from each other that the very absurdity of this assemblage provoked in me a hallucinatory succession of images.“ No reflection on you, Max, but what else is new? Marcel Duchamp refered to his ” Green Box“ as ” a kind of Sears and Roebuck catalogue.“ To us this is just a useful metaphor but obviously the curators of this exhibition find this reference quaint enough to finally earn a place in the history of ” high“ art.<br /><br />Every point in this show has been made before. Yeah great, R. Crumb’s comics. Very innovative for them but to us another veritable institution. We’ve known and loved his work for years. Campbell’s soup cans- terrific. The only thing that I didn’t already know of were called ” affichistes“- immense canvases of ripped up posters by some Italian and French artists of the 1960’s. I liked them just as I enjoy the texture of poster-covered walls I see on the streets of the city. Thank you so much but one new ” undiscovered“ ” movement“ does not a revelation make. What MOMA calls ” low“ has been going on for centuries. The only thing new here is that a few scholars have chosen to take a half-assed look at it.<br /> <br />Even the ” logo“ for the show is an embarrasing failure. Based on a cover design for the 1923 book ” On Mayakovsky“ by the Russian B. Arvatov, the High/Low ” logo,“ currently seen all over New York, leaves behind the twisted elegance of the original’s constructivist design and extracts, instead, a cheesey bastardization of it, poorly executed, devoid of life. Like this logo, the show was an unintended parody of itself. In the process, it reduces the world the rest of us live in to an ” underbelly.“ <br /><br />The show is littered with condescending remarks about the ” low“ lifestyle. I found these statements particularly ludicrous:<br />1) ” Dubuffet follows an openness to the lacerations of gutter life that is a particular part of French tradition from Baudelaire to Jean Genet and Céline.“<br />2) a reference to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett’s ” reuse of low verbal comedy.“<br />3) ” A new generation of radical artists expressed their contempt for modernist art only by taking over it’s ironic jokes and turning them into memento mori.“ <br />4) In 1890, ” social scientists examined (graffiti) to understand criminal types.“ Later, psychologists ” came to regard such untutored markings as clues to the mind’s basic creative processes“<br />5) R. Crumb’s comics...“have also offered a vein of burlesque realism.” <br />6) Phillip Guston “used images recalled from old comics- bare planks, cobbled, ungainly shoes and naked light bulbs-as the basis for a monumental art of tragic intensity.” <br /><br />The world of wooden floors and bare light bulbs that this show finds so entertaining is the way most of the world lives- at least the lucky ones that live indoors. While billions of the world’s people spend their lives hovering near the poverty level, MOMA points out that Fernand Léger “saw utilitarian objects valued in a straightforward manner that he felt overturned prejudices about the hierarchy of beauty.” Beautiful or not, this is our lives they’re talking about, folks. “The forces of commercial and political advertising which threatened to turn the city scape into an unending collage” is our reality and we are forced to confront it every day, not just in the ivory rooms of a museum. <br /><br />So if the Sub-Modern is the do-it-yourself tendency, it, like low culture, has been going on for some time now. I’m sure others of you out there are better qualified to talk about the history of self-publishing than I am. But history is full of Sub-Moderns. We all know for instance, that William Blake published his own books, Thomas Paine his pamphlets, even Gandhi was depicted in the Hollywood-esque film of his life as saying that a revolution cannot succeed without a printing press. From the cave paintings at Altamira to the “little magazines” of the 20’s to the indie labels and zines of the 70’s and 80’s to today’s “desktop” publishing activities, the Sub-Modern tendency to do it yourself is a way of talking back to the shackles of life in the “low” lane. <br /><br />The self-publishing movement has gained so much steam in recent years that I see it now a completely separate but equal way of life. Our numbers are growing. Factsheet Five is proof of that. Sure we also participate in “high” and “low” culture; but repulsed by both,we in the self-publishing community have chosen a third way to express ourselves, to communicate our ideas. It is neither as banal and commercial as “low” art or as snobbish and pretensious as “high” art. It is a whole other world which borrows what it needs wherever it can find it. It is part of a tendency that a recent show at the MOMA should have or could have addressed but didn’t- the idea of a middle ground between the two that uses the good qualities of both and the bad qualities of neither to forge a wellspring of activity as rich in it’s diversity as it is in it’s commitment to integrity.<br /><br />Self-publishing has always been possible but the availability of new tools created by the consumer society have both liberated us and trapped us.You’ve got to play the game just to be able to buy the equipment to get out of the game. We are obligated to hold down our jobs, workin’ for the man every night and day, to be able to photocopy a few pages or purchase a Macintosh or home porta-studio. Many of us have heard the touching high art tales of how Charles Ives sold insurance to support his habit of writing obscure music or how poet William Carlos Williams was a physician by day. Today we do the same. While we contemplate our relationship with the rising and falling tides of “culture,” we need our photocopies, our samplers, our tape recorders, our desktop media. Our pencil and paper. With it we create risky works designed not necessarily to subvert but, rather, to simply express our own vision in a “civilized” world turned smelly from so much dead weight. In spite of our “ungainly shoes” and the “burlesque realism” of our situations, we are teeming with life and have every intention of communicating with other like-minded individuals in any way we can. Certainly not everyone can afford a Mac or a video camera so there are still many of us that don’t have the means to create sophisticated sub-modern artifacts. But copy machines and tape recorders are all around us, and a large audience exists for home-made creations in any form. Those of us who do have the means to produce something (anything!) are doing it. Factsheet Five “reviews” it. But how do we create works of value? Only one aspect of the exhibition touched on that question.<br /><br />If the MOMA show had a chance to redeem itself, it was in the performance series by yesterday’s-downtown-weirdos-cum-today’s-uptown-superstars like Eric Bogosian, Spaulding Gray, Ann Magnuson and Laurie Anderson, who presented works in the museum’s basement auditorium. I would have liked to have seen all these performances. Their words in the little booklet that accompanied the series seemed honest, thought-provoking, from the heart. Like the painters and sculptors represented in the show, these performers know the Sub-Modern world first hand. They started out there and if they can get on the Gravy Train, and that is what they desire, more power to them. It’s not their fault that inclusion in this exhibition has trivialized their work. I did manage to see Brian Eno’s “lecture” at MOMA. Though he, too, talked too much about Jeff Koons, and little about music, thus contributing to the hype about High/Low in his own charming way, I found several of his ideas quite interesting.<br /><br />Eno began his talk with a discussion of Duchamp’s readymade “Fountain” (noted in the catalogue as a “flat back Bedfordshire urinal with lip plate #1570-KH.” ) Choosing not to acknowledge that the show featured a replica, Eno discussed “the deification of this particular piece of porcelin” and proceeded to nibble the hand of the institution that invited him to lecture.“This is crap really, isn’t it?” he said at one point. Good little bad boy, Brian.<br /><br />But Eno became the single thought-provoking feature of this show with his discussion of “irreducible value.” He pointed out that no where does the MOMA catalogue for this show mention money. Indeed, a glaring ommision in a world where the prevailing standards of value have so much to do with aesthetic impact. Eno proposed the idea of an “aesthetic gold standard” saying that art, like “money, is a sophisticated game of trust.” Pulling out a dollar bill he explained that money really has no value unless we agree it does. That, he said, is also the game of modern art.<br /><br />For the creators of this exhibition, according to Eno, “Value is created by making distinctions between high and low.” He said aesthetic value used to be a universal thing, seemingly ordained by God but “he’s gone now- that’s why artists get paid so much more today.” Good line, Brian. All us Sub-Mods in the audience giggled and cooed in response to this clever iconoclasm. But eventually, Eno made his most important statement: “Exposure is the currency of pop art. Obscurity is the currency of high art.” <br /><br />If that is the case, if there is no universal standard of value, wouldn’t a world of individuals exchanging home-made examples of their own value systems be the logical place for this all to go? I think so. But perhaps an international network of such people is the most we can hope for. I suppose the majority on this planet will always choose to consume “low;” a few others will choose “high” (some because they truly appreciate esoteric, outstanding accomplishments, others because it is the thing to do). But, as always, there remain a few stubborn types like us. Asked to choose between exposure and obscurity, we don’t like the choice and new rules are the result. We don’t buy the sex-crazed futility of mass exposure nor do we want to live the empty life of an undiscovered genius so we choose a middle road instead- the Sub-Modern. We exist -or subsist as the case may be- beneath the surface of the high/low see-saw. We can borrow from both worlds and, in the process, reject their respective limiting standards of value. MOMA has set “culture” up as an arm wrestling match between Michaelangelo and Michel J. Fox but we won’t play. We won’t chase the “high” art carrot that dangles in our faces. We want the so-called profundity of high art and the planks and bare lightbulbs of our real lives. <br /><br />In an effort to raise a discussion about what motivates us, I spoke last time of Proud Mary, the media machine that eats all that attempts to disarm it. I don’t want to see the eternal Sub-Modern network be a farm team for the Proud Mary machine. Our activities should not be a rehearsal for, or a microcosm of, the high or low worlds. It is an alternative. We each need to delineate our own value system, one that works for us. The only quality that the entire Network needs to embrace would be simply that we each have the right to our own value system. Anarchists and Republicans, Spiritualists and Materialists can learn to live together if the right of each person to their own opinion is held above all other values. Rather than judging people by some universal standard or manifesto, we must simply acknowledge the right of each of us to peruse the pages of a magazine like Factsheet Five and check off the entries that interest us. Nothing is politically correct except our own right to choose what we want to consume and produce. And that includes feeding off the Proud Mary (while she feeds off of us) for some revenue. I’m not blasting anyone for having to work for a corporation or to show and/or sell their work through a commercial institution. We all have to do it to some extent. But I have coined the term Sub-Modern as a way of grouping us together apart from the High/Low dichotomy. I see our network as a working model for international cooperation without an aesthetic or moral gold standard.<br /><br />So if these activities don’t need a name, why the collective term Sub-Modern? Because catchy names are something I personally value. I like the sound of it. I enjoy thinking up slogans. I call us Sub-Mods because I want to. I saw the MOMA show, I thought, I’m not“ high” art, I’m not “ low” art. I’m not “ postmodern”- that’s last year’s “ high” art hooey while the stuff I’m talking about has been going on from Day One. The tradition of publishing one’s own work is a strong one and its influences have hit all points on the high-low continuum. People like us have always hunted and pecked our way through the rubble of society and created a few works we feel good about. If it is fashionable to the masses, it gets absorbed into the “ low” world of pop culture, if it’s fashionable to the haughty world of high society, we make our protestations, then join the club. I enjoy observing the way Proud Mary eats her young. I have a sick fascination for the way the integrity of the “ Underground” is destroyed by the “ Uberground-“ be it high or low. So I coined this phrase because seeing myself and the rest of you as an Underground Railroad of the Heart fits my value system. If this term Sub-Modern ever gets used again, fine, if not, that’s fine too. Who knows, maybe some jingle-writer will pay handsomely for it. Nevertheless, if you accept this name for any other reason than that it also fits your value system, you haven’t understood a word I’ve said.The Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-1103033059618199702004-12-14T01:39:00.001-12:002009-03-24T23:30:16.753-12:00Panmodernism Explained: Proud Mary and the Internal Network<span style="font-weight:bold;">In the following text, which I wrote in the early 1990s, the ideas of Panmodernism were first sketched out. I didn't know it then, but I was explaining a theory in which a big ugly Societal/Corporate machine eats the creations of creative individuals, dumbs them down and churns them out for mass consumption. There is more to it than that, but in a nutshell, that is what Panmodernism is about. <br /><br />I wrote this text when I was a columnist for <span style="font-style:italic;">Factsheet Five</span>, the self-publishing Holy Grail, the wonderful zine about zines published by Mike Gunderloy in upstate New York. It was sent all over the world to the DIY (Do It Yourself) community. I wrote a column for it called <span style="font-style:italic;">Net Work</span> (as in "How much work could a network net if a network could net work?"). As I say, this appeared at one point though I am not sure of the exact date. It was also published in other publications including Lloyd Dunn's <span style="font-style:italic;">Yawn.</span> But nevertheless, I had just returned from the <span style="font-style:italic;">Festival of Plagiarism</span> in Glasgow, Scotland and my interest in mail art was being replaced by the theories of the culture at large that eventually became Panmodernism. As that Evil Genius of The Alamo, Dr. Al Ackerman used to erroneously say, "This will explain:"</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Proud Mary and the Internal Network by Mark Bloch</span><br /><br />We are living in a world where, as always, there is a huge Machine out there churning away. There are a few of us who don’t want to be part of it. Well, at least not fully.Not all the time. So we choose to be in this smaller machine which has come to be known as mail art or The Eternal Network.<br /><br />So here we are in our little world, our Eternal Network. What is it like? It is a collection of individu- als. But inside each of us we have a kind of inner network, a number of voices that speak to us in different ways. Who is the “us” that is being spoken to? I dunno. But hopefully we all are able to corral all these voices into a single vector and with that vector we enter into the external Eternal network. A dissi- dent voice in our Internal Network that hasn’t been listened to can make the message confusing. Every voice in our Internal Network needs to be heard and dealt with before we can communicate effectively with the outer Eternal Network.<br /><br />So what happens when we get there? Messages are flying everywhere. Each of us is writing and communicating not just to one person but with many others at roughly the same time, in any number of languages, also using representational codes like “art.” So the communication is not just one to one. And as we all know, one-to-one communication is difficult enough. So imagine having to participate in this myriad of cross-currents called The Eternal Net- work with all kinds of people at once, people who you may or may not know, people who may or may not know each other, people who may or may not be in touch with all the voices of their own inner network.<br /><br />So that makes for a lot of variables when it comes to communication.<br /><br />If communication is defined as the sending and receiving of a particular message, then absolute com- munication is impossible. What is transmitted is never received in its entirety. We all have slightly different ways of interpreting words and concepts; they mean different things, our values are different, our memories are different, nuances get lost in the transmission. There may be a part of the Internal Network that is quite present in the transmission but not consciously known by the person transmitting.<br /><br />The key is refining the Internal Network so that the communication is as clear as possible when it leaves the “self” and enters the external network. (Jung called it The Self. For now, I will call it a “node.” A node is the collective energies of one person’s Internal Network, perceived by the outside world, and even to ourselves, as a single conscious- ness. This is not true however; in fact, we all consist of an inner network of many voices, as described above. Those who differ with this opinion may con- sider that the node is not the collective energies of the inner voices but that the node is instead the individual’s consciousness in its most basic state. I personally feel there is more to it than that, however. Jung did, too, and I direct you to Jungian psychology in an effort to understand your own Internal Network.)<br /><br />When information leaves a self, a node as it were, it begins to bounce around the outer network. Perhaps a message is sent from the sender—Node Z—to another person in the network—Node A, but a copy was also sent to Node B, a partial copy was sent to Node C, etc. Nodes A, B, and C may exchange copies of Node Z’s message amongst themselves, with or without additions. All this activity in the Eternal Network creates webs of complexity that are almost too difficult for a single person to understand. But let’s focus on the lowest level of complexity—the “communication” between Nodes Z and A.<br /><br />Node Z sends the message. Node A receives the message, it is not a complete transmission of the message but that’s what makes the external Eternal Network worthy of participation. It is the incomplete communication that makes the network interesting and challenging. If we all agreed and understood identically, there would be no need for the Eternal Network. We would be in complete agreement. That would be Utopian but perhaps a little boring. In fact part of the mail art Network has become complacent that way. A feeling that the medium is the message permeates the network (“The address is the art,” so to speak, as I once said.) (I now see that concepts like The Address Is The Art is what has accounted for a loss of meaning in our messages. I apologize for participating in the glorification of this destructive trend.) When the medium is the message, there no longer is a need to even read the actual content of the message, to think about it to respond to it. The fact that something was sent and received is enough. But I hold that this is not communication nor is it interest- ing. It is the imperfections in the communication pro- cess and the need to overcome them that eventually creates understanding between individuals. Compla- cency breeds complacency and eventually isolation.<br /><br />When something was sent and received and that is enough, it results in what the Big Machine has resulted in—a lot of messages flying around in the form of various media, remaining unread, not fully absorbed, not fully responded to, simply acknowl- edged as yet another message as media. But there is no substance to media—it is a medium for the trans- mission of a message.<br /><br /> It is ironic that a guy called McLuhan gave us this M&M philosophy. The whole thing has been ab- sorbed into the Big Machine and is now used an excuse for the lack of meaning and conviction in our society. McFish, McFries, MacPaint, McLuhan. All medium, transmitted very quickly, with no nutritional value.<br /><br />When everyone is happy that messages are being sent and received and no one is reading and interpret- ing the messages in their own flawed but human way, a kind of ennui is the result. I feel that is currently the situation in the Eternal Network. We have grown comatose from all the messages. The meanings of these messages don’t permeate and challenge our Internal Network anymore, except occasionally and minimally. Perhaps because they are all media and no content, the intensity of the messages has decreased in power and scope so we end up with a lot of stuff in the mail box that isn’t even worth interpreting. The failure of the messages to be read has resulted in the failure of meaningful messages to be sent. On both sides meaningless messages are being transmitted, resulting in a loss of time and revenue on the part of the participants. We spend all the vital energy of our Internal Network on this process.<br /><br />Meanwhile the Big Wheel keeps on turning.<br /><br />Proud Mary is the name of the Machine, Why?— because it is a man disguised as a woman. It is a woman who is not what she appears to be. A woman is often nurturing and forgiving. A man is often aggressive and vengeful. A woman is not proud, a woman can cry, a woman can drop the pretense. She can sacrifice herself for the sake of creation. Yin. The feminine. So the idea of a Proud Mary is an oxymoron. What we get is a machine disguised as a man disguised as a woman. A man-machine in drag.<br /><br />Devoid of humanity, it is a consumin’ machine. Proud, Big, Turnin’. Eating everything in its path. Rollin’ on the river. It could be called by other names. Proud Mary is Guy Debord’s “Spectacle.” Orwell’s “Big Brother.” Call it what you want. I call it Mary—reminiscent of a certain virgin fucked by a certain god. What could be a more perfect metaphor? Purity and impurity simultaneously. An innocent vir- gin proudly raped, in effect, by the Man upstairs who does it all for her own good and the good of Mankind.<br /><br />So we in the Network think we are not part of Proud Mary; we are in our own little network. But like the Proud Mary, we have become mesmerized by the turning of the wheel. The medium is the message for us, too. We have become Proud Mary’s little sister.<br /><br />Certain members of our network see Mail art as a kind of farm team for the Proud Mary. When the form of our message—the medium, that is—is sufficiently polished and has developed to a point of machine-like slickness, we can jump ship and ride on the Proud Mary. But I don’t see it that way. I’d like to see our network grow away from the wake of Mary’s proud Wheel.<br /><br />The Network, like the businessmen who keep the Proud Mary afloat, are generally of one of two groups. There are backslappers, those who believe in the medium as the message and feel that any transmis- sion at all deserves a hearty congratulations and a slap on the back. Then there are the backstabbers, those who smile on the outside but due to some disgruntled member of their inner network possess a message of hatred and manifest it through a calculated and some- times subconscious act of malice against another individual. They project their inner fears and phobias on other members of the network, perhaps they write a history of the Network and leave out a certain node accidentally. Or steal another node’s idea and call it their own. Or write a letter to other nodes trashing the message of another behind their back. Most of us have let it happen in one form or another. But mali- ciousness is an obstacle to communication. So is an obsession with Mary. Messages need to be directed to the node(s) in question. Like a disgruntled part of the Internal Network, an obsession with Mary muddies the message.<br /><br />But for some, the messages only take on real meaning when they jump ship to the Proud Mary.<br /><br /><blockquote>“It seems to me that easy access to the means of artistic (re)production (photocopiers & cassette tapes) altered the material relations between some cultural workers & the com- modities they produce. This results in (or co- occurs with) a changed set of social relations.<br /><br />Since access to the means of production is no longer necessarily controlled/mediated by a hierarchical class of “owners” (including editors/galleries/critics, via their “ownership” of cultural validation), a network of cultural workers has evolved, producing & exchanging their work amongst themselves, and creating a sub-culture: that of mail art and “Networking.” In reaction to the hierarchical control system in the mass-mediated dominant “art” culture, some confused ideas appear in the mail art sub-culture. One is that all partici- pants have equal access to the “network”. We are all affirmed as creative beings, and offered a completely open venue of expression, to be judged only on the merits of our work. A similar idea is that all product of the “net- work” are in some way of equal value—the perennial “no rejections/documentation to all” mail art show. Ideally, this would put the responsibility for critical response on each individual viewer; but in reality, the role of cultural consumer hasn’t kept pace with changed roles of cultural producer. Folks still seem to wait for validation of their work by some outside arbiter—Factsheet Five, for instance. Hence the endless bitch when your favorite ’zine pans your latest cassette. The situation is self-imposed, though-by complain- ing about unfavorable reviews, the artist gives the power of validation to that reviewer. I believe that folks must learn to make their own critical judgements, and that intelligent reviews by other folks can help with that, if folks can read them as only one person’s opinion instead of gospel.” (From <span style="font-style:italic;">Yawn;</span> unidentified contributor from Cleveland, Ohio)</blockquote><br /><br />Where the writer’s example of <span style="font-style:italic;">Factsheet Five</span> lies in relation to Mary is open to discussion. Regard- less, some see Mary as the only legitimate rubber stamp of approval in the world. It is ironic that such perceptions are often what result in some of the clearest messages in our network. For it is in seeking approval and acceptance from Mary that forces oth- erwise backslapping media-mongers to crystallize their fuzzy thoughts into a coherent message. Only then does the medium cease to be of interest as a thing in itself, because, in fact, even though it mimics the Proud Mary, the smaller Network ship has the task of convincing the larger one that that its existence is valid. Unfortunately, it is to the credit of Mary’s Big seductive Wheel that (often unconsciously) many members of the little ship won’t feel right until their messages are vindicated by the Proud Mary machine.<br /><br /><blockquote>“Art which criticizes the establishment is reintegrated into it, defusing useful comprehen- sion of its horror.” (Also from <span style="font-style:italic;">Yawn; </span>contribution from ASAC-CA)</blockquote><br /><br />So it is often only when the messages about mail art or The Eternal Network jump from the private world of the Internal Network to the larger world of the Proud Mary, that the actual message transcends the medium. This is when mail artists and others reach within themselves, to create a message with actual content. As a way of reaching out to the “higher force” that is Mary. A way of apologizing for our transgressions against the larger machine. We put it all in very clear terms, create a true message for interpretation by the Machine. But once that happens and Proud Mary decides whether or not she wants to eat the message (and she always does), it goes out of the control of the mail artist and even the Eternal Network which is the subject of the message. And of course Proud Mary’s function is to eat everything that passes before it. No message or medium is too dis- tasteful for the iron stomach of the Beast Mary.<br /><br />If the messages were not sent to Mary, then Mary would not know of the network’s existence. She can only eat what she sees and smells and hears about. But again, it is the seductive movement of her wheel that hypnotizes just about everything into her path. Thus, the only chance of not being consumed by the Big Machine is to not let her know of our existence. To ignore the seduction. To cool down the more egotis- tical members of our Internal Networks who long for recognition by the larger machine. To be happy with our own little Eternal Network and not to be so eager to merge with the Proud Mary machine. To stay outside of her influence, as, for example, have certain rare tribes in the frontiers of the African continent who have not yet heard the churnings of the Mary Machine. Who listen to the beat of their own (Mary might say “unsophisticated”) drumming.<br /><br />But we are not those tribes. We have grown up in the belly of the Beast. We are born of Proud Mary and unto Proud Mary we shall return. But perhaps we get sick and tired of “workin’ for the Man every night and day.” Proud Mary has it within her power to make us think that she is the relief we are seeking. That she is what we need to escape to. That’s what created Mary in the first place. A distrust of our own Internal Network. But now it is Mary that makes us want to escape. She makes us doubt the power of our own inner network to comfort us, to heal us. So we turn to her seductive wheel for nurturing. But she does not and can not nurture us. She only consumes us as we attempt to consume her and she, herself, is very difficult to escape from. Because when we think we jump ship we imagine we are free but in fact Proud Mary is also the river and also the banks of the river and also the land that stretches out on either side of that river. That’s why in our little boat that we think is so free, we are really only mimicking Mary.<br /><br />How do we actually get out of the way of Proud Mary? Is it possible to jump ship and escape her influence for a part of each day and change Mary’s course without her realizing it? Is it possible to jump Mary’s ship and just enjoy being away from her? Perhaps that’s why we’re such a bunch of backslap- pers, we are just pleased as hell to have the illusion that for once Mary is not chewing our ass like a cow chews his cud. So we congratulate each other and smile. And I can see why we should or could. Even an illusion of a moment of quiet with our Internal Net- work can be very rewarding.<br /><br />But how would we get away from the Big Wheel once and for all?<br /><br />For one thing it would require that we no longer write mindlessly about our Eternal Network for her Big Wheel. Not unless we want her to hear about us.<br /><br />Yes, a more calculated strategy is in order. We need to be more selective about how we leak information to the Mary Machine. We can have our secrets that will keep us from being eaten. And it is important that we don’t get eaten.It is important that someone in our society stay outside of the path of Mary so that we can notice when she’s floating off course. Mary needs a rudder that she does not know about and I propose that the Eternal Network, directed by focused and responsible nodes, be that rudder. We need to learn to steer the Proud Mary without her knowledge. Be- cause we answer to the higher authority of the Inter- nal Network.<br /><br />Where should we steer her? First of all the message must be returned to the role of message and the medium must be returned to the role of messen- ger. In the old days they used to kill the messenger if they didn’t like the message. Then too, they mistook the medium for the message. But those days are over.<br /><br />We must all refine our inner networks so that our messages are clear. Then we must insist that our messages are received and responded to appropri- ately. Some of you will object to this. It will take the element of play out of the Eternal Network. Too many rules. Well it is “play” that Mary wants. Mary want us all to play, but to play her way, blindly, without care for the consequences. No parent in their right mind lets their kids play in the middle of a busy street.<br /><br />There is a time and a place for everything. I think the time for work in the network is now. Those of us who believe in our right to play in our own way must put down our toys for a while and instead work at sending meaningful messages that will be understood and have impact. Perhaps the turning of Proud Mary’s Big Wheel is more benign than we think. It seems so calculated, so thought out, so complete in its path of destruction. Perhaps there is no danger. Perhaps we are Proud Mary and a quiet conversation with our Internal Network can turn the destruction around. But we must determine that ourselves. Proud Mary will have us believe unconditionally that it’s all just a cruise on a riverboat. She will create the waves, we are only passengers. She tells us she has our best interests at heart and that all we have to do is sit back and enjoy the ride.The Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com55tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-1103030288839418742004-12-01T04:16:00.000-12:002004-12-14T01:25:32.736-12:00The MarketeersWhen I was in my twenties, I can remember my friend Lucy saying through the post-adolescent haze, something that was actually quite insightful: “Everyone we know is either an artist, teacher or healer.” It was true. “Back in the day,” when I was youthful, handsome and attractive, me and others of my ilk, especially my closest friends, in college or out or never would be, turned our gaze toward the future and dreamed of being great artists. And yes, there were many that became, by default or by choice, gifted and generous teachers and healers. But for me it was the arts that beckoned. My role models were poets like Richard Brautigan, writers like Vonnegut, with his treasure trove of novels, up and coming actors like DeNiro or the actor-directors Woody Allen or Warren Beatty, filmmakers like Copolla or Truffaut, visual artists like Rauschenberg or Robert Smithson, performers like Laurie Anderson or Robert Wyatt, the Talking Heads or the cast of the original Saturday Night Live. Broadcasters like Tom Snyder, Frazer Smith and Rodney Bingenheimer interested me too, as did the after hours David Letterman, who was constantly being compared to Ernie Kovacs. It seemed like something to aspire to. I did have one friend, Arthur, who went to business school in Boston and has gotten rich and gone broke a coupla times since then. But for the most part, Lucy was right. Most of us were artists, teachers and healers of some kind.
<br />
<br />Today, it appears that the best creative minds of the younger generation have steered their utopian vision not to art, but to marketing. Perhaps they see it as The Art of Marketing. Perhaps they dream of A Better World Through Marketing, the way the generation a few before mine put their faith in science. But I doubt it. I think most of them just see it as a way to make money. Lots of it. Good gig, they think, as they select their major, Marketing.
<br />
<br />The world is now overrun with these nitwits. They haven’t had anything even resembling an original thought since they played with their not-yet-a-dynasty Legos at age 4 or 5. That was when the creativity must have been pounded out of them by god knows what. Marketing experts make it their business to know about this demographic or that, just what makes them tick. But I am no Marketing Expert. I just look at shit and have a mechanism called instinct under my shirt that viscerally tells me if something is good or bad for me. That’s the way people used to do it, before The Attack of the Marketeers. Yes, we learned to listen to our gut. But the Marketeers do it with spreadsheets. So is it any wonder that business is booming, even during our horrid Voodoo Millenial Economy while nothing has any nutritional value? It is because our life is run by corporations and the corporations are getting their cues from these vacuous Microsoft Excel Jockeys.
<br />
<br />But I will rail about our Corporatocracy another day. Today I am interested in highlighting what I have noticed about these rich young turks of our Turdworld country. It all comes down to one woman actually. Her name is Connie and she was a bright, sexy and gregarious twenty-something I used to work with. Perhaps she was in her early thirties, I don’t know. But she was a decade or two younger than me and that is what I am getting at. When I was her age, people like her were goofy artist-types, causing no harm to anyone but themselves. Sure we were poverty-stricken, but that, too, is a topic for contemplation elsewhere. We were happy. We were loud, confident and wrong, but of no consequence to anyone except the geezer next door who banged on the wall when the music got too loud.
<br />
<br />Now that very geezer is marketed to by the marketing miscreants disguised as know-it-alls in ties, or if you work for a “start up,” no tie. Did you hear about the jumper cable that walked into a bar? The bartender said “OK I’ll serve you but don’t start anything.” Well, what I am trying to say is that now everything is controlled by marketing: the jumper cables, the bars, the joke books, the loud music the young people listen to, the walls people are banging on, even us unwitting geezers (I am in my forties, after all. They’d put me out to pasture if they could find a pasture), are serving our corporate masters via the marketing dweebs. But once again I am straying from my point.
<br />
<br />I want to simply tell you about Connie, the clueless marketing dumb ass. As I said, she is an intelligent young woman. I respect her a great deal, believe it or not. In fact, that is my point. She used to be ONE OF US. But now the evil Mysterious Marketing Forces of Unknown Origin have swooped down and stolen our children, our cousins, our sisters and our brethren. Once likable people who were merely bad poets or untalented painters are now doing serious damage to the rest of us with their Bachelors and heaven help us Masters Degrees in Marketing. One day Connie sent out an email. This was in 2004. Only months ago. She sends out an email about our website activites-– regurgitating the conventional web wisdom of 1998. And that was stuff people came up with in the early nineties! The people that came up with it are either the 5% of genius exceptions to the rule of her very generation, or else still-functioning dinosaurs from my era who created the Internet and the web, too. Because 5% of any generation is always ahead of the curve and I do not believe for a second that what I am saying applies to everyone. Just most of them. The vast majority.
<br />
<br />Anyway Connie’s email basically rehashed stuff that people were talking about in chat rooms before the marketers started calling them “chat rooms.” Chat rooms were just some some stupid Unix trick that your typical chip-chewing misanthrope thought up in the middle of the night, just like the Usenets and Gophers that circled the planet before the worldwide web made it safe for everyone to get an Internet address because now it had pictures. But again, I ramble. The simple point I am trying to make is that Connie’s email was full of old news and sent around to her bosses and people like me, her temp underlings, as she tried to brown nose the upper floors with some crap she took off some marketing web site who took it of some other website who read it in a book summarizing what some outlaw on the pre-Information Superhighway wrote in an email in 1991. I know this because I traced it back. I looked at what she had written which struck me at first glance, as obvious. As in, “Get to the good part.” But alas, there was none to be had because it was all marketing double-speak. Horseshit about what the web could do for us and our revenue streams if we could only market our well-positioned marketing things properly. Or something. I really don’t remember what it said. I know I saved it and it is here somewhere. I will post it if I ever find it.
<br />
<br />But Connie was my boss and it was my job to read her email and comment on the substance of it, which has unbeknownst to her, withstood the test of time. So it must have some merit or the Marketeers wouldn’t be kicking it around on their well designed just-like-all-the other-one websites. Or I could ignore her email, which I did. But what I resent is that 1) I am an artist and I am working for a marketer and 2) marketers are creating markets that the artists and techers and healers have to fill instead of the artists teachers and healers creating art, teachings and healing the people that are then handed over to the marketers to sell. Our society is largely vacuous because the prodcts are not longer the things that people need, the people are now the products that are sold to the corporations. And this makes us feel like... well, products.
<br />
<br />Suffice to say that the world has been taken over by idiots who want to sell you something because if they do, they’ll get money and then they can buy the stuff <span style="font-style:italic;">you</span> want to market to <span style="font-style:italic;">them.</span> I suppose it is all designed to make someone feel better somewhere but I haven’t found them yet.
<br />The Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-1103027759992033342004-11-29T04:33:00.000-12:002004-12-14T01:32:50.010-12:00Panmodern vs. High BaroqueNEW YORK, NY November 29, 2004–In an article “Chelsea Enters Its High Baroque Period” in yesterday’s New York Times art section, Roberta Smith describes the continually-evolving chaos in Manhattan’s Chelsea art district. “Meanwhile, the Chelsea carnival continues, simultaneously expanding, imploding and absorbing. All species of art gallery are evident, and at every stage of development. Chelsea, like SoHo, is making itself up as it goes along. A contemporary art scene on this scale has never happened before, and it's hard to imagine it ever happening again.”
<br />
<br />Without getting into any arguments or discussions about the possibility of such a unique and random series of events “ever happening again.” I am drawn to the last paragraph which states “Catch it now, because in a few years, Chelsea nostalgia will have replaced SoHo nostalgia, and the current state of affairs will have become the good old days.”
<br />
<br />True enough and well-put. The question is not whether it will happen again, because it always does, uniqueness and randomness notwithstanding. The question is where and when and how. That is what the big time <a href="http://panmodern.blogspot.com/2004/12/marketeers.html">Marketeers</a> wish they could know. Because someday, no matter what it is, it will all be replaced and “Chelsea” will be remembered only as the title of a melodrama or sitcom starring good-looking teenagers on “the WB.”
<br />
<br />The unintentional subtext of Ms. Smith’s paragraphs is the implicit urgency of you, the consumer, getting involved with the current scene before the bloom is off the rose. But “in a few years” Blooming Idiots that chase this type of trendiness will be of one of two types, or both. Type 1, the Perpetuon, will be so busy chasing the next trend that they will not have the time to look back while Type 2, the Timefukkker, will not only long for the good old days, but will spend the rest of their lives doing so. Whether they will have been caught up on its glamour, its riches, its artifice or its rejection, they will become stuck in time because this passing moment is “their” era. Not only will the art scene of the moment become their obsessional lifetime vantage point but so will the music, the fashion, the food, the very smells of the era. Ten years from now those smells will be stinky and rancid but after two decades they will be not only exonerated, but put up on a pedestal for all to envy because that is the route everything must take in the Panmodern era.
<br />
<br />The current art scene, like the current Anything scene, will join the ranks of previous important Must Be TV come and gone. Like rap and punk and heroin chic, it will fall face first onto the slag heap of consumer history, for sale and forsaken until another strata of melted, formerly white hot “What’s Hot” barely-identifiable globs of post-industrial panmodern waste plop down atop it, like so many societal bowel movements, cooling, frothing, and foaming at the mouth of the flavor of the month. Bring your credit card! Everything Must Go!
<br />The Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9600221.post-1102986160716086682004-11-28T07:28:00.000-12:002004-12-14T00:47:28.216-12:00Wake Up to PanmodernismI could say "Welcome to Panmodernism." But that would imply you were not already here. That would imply you are not NOW and were not YESTERDAY already living in a state of Panmodernism. And you were. And you are. Take it from me, we all have been- for a long, long time. So Wake Up to Panmodernism, kids.
<br />
<br />First of all, I mean it literally. For the rest of your life, you have a place to go when you wake up in the morning. Grab a coffee, sit down at your computer and read this website. It will help you get some perspective on the day ahead.
<br />
<br />This website will explore Panmodernism. This website will explore the <span style="font-style:italic;">meaning</span> of Panmodernism. The <span style="font-style:italic;">implications</span> of Panmodernism. For instance, you may wonder "what <span style="font-style:italic;">is</span> Panmodernism?" We will explore that here. You may wonder <span style="font-style:italic;">"What is panmodern? How do we know when something is panmodern?"</span> That, too, will be discussed here. You have come to the right place. You may wonder, <span style="font-style:italic;">Should words like "panmodern" and "panmodernism" always be capitalized?</span> Or <span style="font-style:italic;">Are there definitions we need to know in order to discuss Panmodernism?</span> Or you may just wonder, <span style="font-style:italic;">"Is there something wrong with me?"</span> Well, the answer to <span style="font-style:italic;">that</span> question just may be found here, too.
<br />
<br />The fact is, I am not sure. I mean, I am pretty sure there <span style="font-style:italic;">is</span> something wrong with you and yes, it is probably largely due to Panmodernism. But other than that, the questions about Panmodernism remain open as of today. Undecided. To be discussed. To come. However, we are not starting with a blank slate. I have some ideas about Panmodernism and I will post them here. You may also want to have a look at my website <a href="http://www.panmodern.com">P A N M O D E R N . C O M</a>.
<br />
<br />And then there is originality. Panmodernism is very intertwined with the subject. Some of these are my ideas but I didn't start out with all of them. Perhaps I started out with none of them. They were passed down to me by many generations of Panmodernists. Furthermore, I am interested in <span style="font-style:italic;">your</span> thoughts. That is why this is called the Panmodern <span style="font-style:italic;">Feedback Loop</span>. I will write about Panmodernism and then I will listen to your comments. Then I may respond to them. Hence the <span style="font-style:italic;">loop</span> idea. So say what you want.
<br />
<br />I will now begin to jot down my ideas. They are way overdue. We have all been living in Panmodern times for a long, long while. It is time to make some sense of this confusing Panmodern Age.
<br />
<br />So wake up to Panmodernism, kids, today and every day. It might help.The Panmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10952584241873504252noreply@blogger.com7