Exhibition image from BYOB New York
Reflecting on Dutch artist Rafael Rozendaal’s chaotically orchestrated Bring Your Own Beamer exhibit at Spencer Brownstone this past weekend, several questions concerning contemporary internet artists have since come to mind. Who are all of these artists, how are they linked and what is their relation to a for-profit venture such as Spencer Brownstone? All readily apparent answers feature a similar conclusion: the internet and market-dominated art worlds are not separate entities and will continue to wrap their tentacles around each other as time progresses. Currently, many Web 2.0 artists utilize the internet as a publicity and networking machine with the latent hope of using their social capital accumulated online as an opportunity for commercial exhibition later (or sooner) in life. The distributional efficiency of artists publishing content online can very easily serve as an appendage of the art market. There is already a “minor league” feeder program in the making, where galleries and other institutions discover artists who are digitally popularized. Using a combination of websites including but not limited to Tumblr, Youtube, Delicious and Facebook, these artists are able to produce intricate webs of cross promotion and widespread recognition. The minor league is created by internet-based art communities and market-influenced institutions performing a feedback loop with one another through an intimate understanding of the other’s social and economic value.
As a minor league, internet art communities aid commercial galleries by calling attention to artists whose work has garnered an audience people are already interested in, ending the guessing game of whether or not an artist’s projects will be palpable to a wider viewership. By increasing her visibility, an artist’s digital peers practically elect her to a position in luxury capitalism. In return, all of those peers who previously supported her are bestowed with the social capital of the art gallery’s decision making because they had the good sense to help validate someone who was going places (though it is doubtful this value can or will ever be translated offline). This is not to mention the likely increased amount of respect an artist’s peers will have for her as a result of her gallery approval.
AIDS-3D, Ford/Aten, 2009
Gallery directors basing their representational decisions on the amount of attention an artist cultivates online is a much less despotic version of capitalism than the case in which directors strictly choose to represent artists based on their perceived profitability among collectors’ previously demonstrated tastes. The former takes into account art that is relevant to many people and the latter anticipates the interests of few. This influence from the internet does not equalize the disproportionate amount of power the individual gallery director has in determining the offline public’s perception of what art is of merit or solve the gallery’s locationally-exclusive problems of viewer access– but it’s an improvement on the status quo in at least one regard.
The minor league is not an example of an alternative structure to the art market, but a newly available path to succeeding within it. In the minor league we see the internet’s participants and profit-based institutions thriving from one another, exchanging power to embolden themselves through the other’s promotional exclusivity. What separates the minor league and its contemporary offline peers is not the ambition to be recognized or to have a career– it is the fact that the former has more successfully engaged a national audience at a younger age than ever before. Several years ago, there was much talk at the peak of the market bubble about whether or not giving barely-graduated artists so much money so early in their careers would be healthy for their state of mind in the long run. While the money may now be absent for most, money’s counterpart– attention– has become a permanent staple for internet artists who are even as young as teenagers. To the artists of the Web 2.0 generation, it is accepted that there is never a moment outside the view of one’s peers when online. Privacy simply does not exist. It’s increasingly difficult to separate the professional and social ties of the minor league, as even personal Facebook accounts are integral to these artists’ brands. Once upon a time people rubbed shoulders, now the minor league displays their alliances through public displays of affection on each others’ walls and tagged photos. This is not to say they’ve never met in person– the minor league has traveled across America and beyond, slept on each other’s couches and shown their work in each other’s apartment galleries. For a group of strangers, the minor league is a surprisingly intimate bunch. What this does mean is that all of those personal encounters are validated online– friendships are documented and digitally displayed out of the necessity of their geographic separation. The minor league doesn’t exclusively exist on the internet– that’s just where its participants keep tabs.
Image from Parker Ito's Facebook album 'Chillin on da WWW'
The mass of attention young artists are currently capable of receiving online is in many ways based on an error in their own perception of similarity between each other. There is now a tenuous union among “internet artists” that totalizes the diverse efforts of many into a single hegemonic block of viewership through the networked links of aforementioned Web 2.0 platforms. To go through, person by person, the full list of participants in a BYOB exhibition would reveal a great diversity of methods and interests. Because this is a generation largely unwilling to concretely contextualize themselves through artist statements or text of any kind, the lowest common denominators of their mutual existence (youth, cultural fluency and social relations) remain the unstated bonds that tie artists of often greatly differing interests together. In The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich notes, “the popular understanding of new media identifies it with the use of a computer for distribution and exhibition rather than [as a site of] production.” In this way, many Web 2.0 artists have confused content and carrier– thinking of ‘the internet’ as a shared concern and not a shared platform for their diverse range of presumed intentions.
Perhaps this false perception of unity is due to a lack of critical writing surrounding internet art. While there are a growing number of artists online, there is not a proportionate number of media outlets dedicated to covering the efforts of this mass. The majority of coverage the minor league receives is from itself, as participants constantly link peers to other peers’ work. The influential and widely read online publications covering internet art now surmount to a grand total of two– Rhizome and Art Fag City. Despite the courage of these sources to engage a relatively new art phenomenon, each falls short of being a definitive source for information regarding the minor league. While Rhizome’s blog has long been judged for being American-centric and uncritical, Art Fag City’s critical mentions of internet art rarely extend beyond a single (often snarky) paragraph. The most rigorous and intelligent critical writing on the work of Web 2.0 artists and their predecessors came from Gene McHugh’s now-defunct blog, Post Internet, a resource that will likely be a defining historical record for this generation. It simply asks too much to expect an evolved discourse from two media sources alone. What is hegemonic about internet art’s peer viewership poses a chicken or egg question of origin in relation to the minor league’s limitedly available media coverage.
Ben Schumacher, Corner Piece No. 2, 2009
Also necessary to remember is that the influx of participants in the minor league are typically very young– roughly 18-26 years old. It often takes much longer to gain a critical voice and the faculties necessary to begin feeling comfortable writing. The current period of internet art is marked by a lag in the number of people capable of starting a Tumblr (all) and the number of people who have studied the subjects necessary to provide an erudite judgment of those Tumblrs’ conceptual content (few). Without this criticality, the minor league will continue to run based on what is commonly trafficked instead of what is critically validated– in addition to the fact that traffic itself will continue to flow to artistic subjects that are the most aesthetically common instead of those that are the most theoretically advanced or well understood.
It is not out of academic elitism that I bemoan the absence of critical voices for internet art– in fact, it’s the complete opposite. I accept the idea that an aesthetic consensus is as valuable as an intellectual one. I also value the decentralized network of influence that Web 2.0 artists have created as a profoundly egalitarian step forward in artists’ self-organization. But as a true proponent of pluralism, I believe there must be a wide-ranging and equally competing number of influences for our perception of work created in the minor league– to include the diversification of blogs and fostering of other modes of community-driven discourse. By its definition, pluralism is a tendency that runs contrary to all forms of monopolization– even that of the democratic majority. A minor league wholly determined by the reblogs of peers or the fleeting mention in only two viable media sources is no less tyrannical than a Greenbergian state of critical omnipotence.
The minor league would do well to take a page out of Conceptual Art’s history book. In the late 60’s and early 70’s, one couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a conceptual artist’s new essay explaining their work and the movement they belonged to. This was because, in the absence of a theoretical discourse explaining the new form of art they were producing, conceptual artists needed to create the ground underneath their own feet through writing. A similar fervor must be initialized to help explain what this world of internet art is by its own participants– this essay will certainly fall short of that in numerous ways. Assuredly, history will be indifferent to your Google Analytics or Tumblarity stats. With such a limited amount of articulation, the minor league sadly fails to know itself in the moment of its own existence. Cycles of repetition are only broken through decisive measures and risky proclamations. What a shame it would be, to see the efforts of hundreds of artists more equipped for communication than any generation before them, be forgotten because they never attempted to define themselves.
Robert Barry, Inert Gas Series: Helium, 1969
Regardless of this lag between those capable (or willing) to write about the minor league and those producing the art within it, I believe what is socially unified now among the minor league’s artists will become increasingly splintered later for two reasons. The first is an issue of sheer quantity. Regarding the number of people now making art online, pioneering internet artist John Michael Boling once told me, “I remember when we all knew each other, or at least knew each other’s names. It’s nothing like that anymore.” As the number of internet art participants dramatically increases so too will the filtration methods that define flows of traffic. What was originally conceived as the internet’s greatest structural error in the 1990’s was the ‘Babel problem’– the idea that if everyone was talking, blogging, or sharing content no one would have time to listen. This problem was quickly nixed by a huge number of link aggregating websites that were visited based on their continued ability to share pre-filtered information that met their viewers’ standard of interest. This is why VVORK gets more daily traffic than most individual artists I know combined. Promotional blogs providing links to minor league artists will continue to display difference among artists because it is in their best interest to define their form of taste-making as separate from other competing aggregates. If the minor league is not separated through it’s own written assertions or the variably negative and/or constructive criticism of journalistic media sources, it will surely be divided by the positive promotional attention of blogs looking to categorize the artistic content they share.
The second reason for the immanent ‘split’ of the minor league as a homogenous block of peers is an issue of capitalism and self-design. While free-labor communities, like Flickr’s photographers, tend to unite around the similarities they find between each other, the free market rewards the differentiation of products available. Simply because galleries and museums are willing to hear out what wisdom the minor league’s crowd may provide doesn’t mean the entire crowd will be invited along for an exhibit. This is to say that if the minor league continues to place people in ‘the major league’ we will see many more artists considering the formation of their interests in opposition to what is digitally common. Additionally, an increased awareness of the minor league and how it works will lead to a rise in artists who are able to translate their digital work into a physical manifestation, or as a distinct form of property in some regard. The most sophisticated participants in this group recognize their digital locale not as a final destination, but as one of many contexts to be inhabited. Successful minor league artists like Kari Altmann, Oliver Laric, AIDS-3D and Joel Holmberg have all embraced the production and display of objects since their late 2000’s success. Even popular minor league artists whose projects primarily remain digital, like Rafael Rozendaal, have figured out a way to turn the boundless information they present online into a form of property through the sale of URLs to collectors. As with the creation of all new ‘leagues’, there will undoubtedly be a procession of new teams and athletic methods for success. Let the games begin.
hmm :/
“The influential and widely read online publications covering internet art now surmount to a grand total of two– Rhizome and Art Fag City.”
You forgot The Pulse!
http://thepulse.tumblr.com
I will try to be brief in explaining my problems with this:
1.”Without this criticality, the minor league will continue to run based on what is commonly trafficked instead of what is critically validated”
so in other words validation should be private and not public. What makes an artwork/practice valid more, a reblog or an endorsing essay? You have a clear devotion to hierarchy where the institutionalized voice is at the top. Those who have “proven” their ideological command over the totality of history and it’s dialogues have the power for you, it seems. And, there is plenty of writing and communication happening online, you just have to look for it, there is not (as yet, and thank god) some filter for it. At a gallery, someone isn’t at the front door holding writing in your face and chasing after you to read it. No. You have to make a modicum of effort to reach for it next to the beer.
2. A)One of the most troubling contradictions (or negations) is this idea that internet artists today use the inherent social structure of the internet for self-serving purposes. What then is the alternative, to make art only for oneself at home and to deny exposition? One must understand the totalizing breadth and power of the REAL (or traditional) art market that exists on a monstrous scale and envelopes all forms of authentic production in order to critique the idea-market of the internet (not perfect, but greatly more positive by comparison).
2. B)There is a confusion of economic scales due to insular nearsighted perspective. The internet has an economic/commercial element that allows for the sale, on behalf of internet artists, of goods that ultimately go back into the production costs of that artists practice. It is sub micro economics. And if anything it (internet) is an empowering platform that gives economic control directly to the artists and not through information corrupting third parties, dealers etc.
Hey Brad, very well considered post. I think I understand your stance on criticality with regards to Net art. Without a body of critical work from within, it’ll become easier and easier to homogenize the Net art community, at which point we’ll become easier to marginalize… Net art becoming a facile symbol of the generational ADD we’re supposed to have.
One point of contention.
“[...]if the minor league continues to place people in ‘the major league’ we will see many more artists considering the formation of their interests in opposition to what is digitally common”
Understanding and exploiting the digitally common is the greatest tool in the Internet artist’s toolbox! Consciousness of the ebbs and flows of computer-land is the one unifying factor I’ve seen across the successful Net based works I’ve seen. Granted, a work becomes trite when it uses the energy of a meme uncritically. But certainly a work can be entered into an information stream, and be a part of that stream, operate and communicate within it seamlessly, and still remain self-aware and powerful when contraposed against other media objects within that system in a considered and meaningful way. The very best works I’ve seen were aware of the place their viewers came from and where they were going.
In fact, I think that BYOB was confusing precisely because the artifice of “moving through” was removed. For the most part, the works were all certainly “aware” of one another, and in that sense needed the energy of the other works to generate its specific presence. That part didn’t change, and that’s both refreshing and telling. Yet my movement through the show wasn’t the arc that I am used to, where the effect of the previous step is transmitted to the next on a subconscious level. The works at the show wanted to be having one kind of conversation, and instead were forced to have quite another.
My conclusion? The “arc of the surf” is such an integral part of the Net Art scene that, when broken, each work becomes an uncompleted circuit.
Was this intentional on RR’s part?
- v
Hey Chris,
thanks for the encouragement.
I agree with everything you said about how “a work can be entered into an information stream, and be a part of that stream, operate and communicate within it seamlessly, and still remain self-aware and powerful when contraposed against other media objects within that system in a considered and meaningful way.” The problem is, I just don’t see as much of that kind of work as you do on the internet. Maybe there is a ton of it, but I don’t recognize it because in absence of a contextualization it appears to seamlessly blend without posing any challenge to the status quo. Where are all of these radicals?
Perhaps there is no perfect example yet, but when thinking about this idea, I always come back to Jodi’s map of the internet (http://map.jodi.org/). I think here we have an early piece that was self-aware of its relationship to its influences, what it would be influencing, and also its historical context (it’s a cannibalisation of a map of high-level network nodes, I think… I’d have to check on that).
Too bad my best example is from 1997……..
Anyways, it’s essentially a static delicious, but somehow the artifice of listing the links in this way makes the artifice essential, whereas I can’t really feel anything essential about delicious other than the convenience. There might be something to mine here, I’m not totally sure, but the work is out there. More to come. Thanks for starting the discussion.
This incited some feelings for me as well:
Referring to the “Minor League” as a “feeder program” gives too much credit to our ‘movement,’ and furthermore indicts it as subservient to gallerists and money-grubbers. Is it really true that all (or even some) of this collective are opportunistic enough participate in it solely for personal gain? We make friends, share work, ideas, credos, jokes, and advice all for self-serving means? We front the money to show our friends in our apartment galleries and transient exhibition halls. Are we truly secretly hoping that somehow Larry Gagosian will catch wind? I can’t accept these things as true. Obviously, this is not to say that the attention-circus of Net Art is without its successful opportunists. I’m remembering the former life of Terrance Koh and his hardly-subtly self-promotion as AsianPunkBoy. But what form of social interaction is Utopian?
In actuality, the boom-incited misstep of allowing (nay facilitating) young artists to become successful within the institutionalized art market at younger and younger ages has been all but reversed. There is a cautious and unspoken you-must-be-this-old-to-ride-the-ride mentality that has permeated our institutions –reflected by the fact that none of the artists in the “Free” show at the New Museum fall into your “18-26″ category. To my point, I will remind you that Frank Stella was included in an exhibition at MoMA as a 24 year old in 1960. So that leaves us –the “18-26s”– to our own devices; let us continue to do what every generation of young artists has done before us: support each other, cultivate novel and creative thought. Let us champion the boundary pushing art that so much of the “Minor League” roster creates through any and every means accessible to us.
You tell us that without distanced analysis our movement risks becoming marginalized, but really, isn’t it this very impulse to define and understand everything that is happening as it happens the plague of contemporary media? For every event its own analytical breakdown. You pejoratively refer to the “tyrannical Greenbergian state” of prescription, yet it seems to me like you’re longing for it.
Armstrong,
thank you for reading and responding, I appreciate your input but have to say I disagree with a number of your points.
Many employment environments (an office, a police station, a faculty lounge) are places where people “make friends, share work, ideas, credos, jokes”. This does not mean those friendships are fake or those jokes are not funny. What it does mean is that all of these interactions are happening under the auspices of continuing your day-to-day work, of having a career. The minor league is not an activity, it is an environment that guides a teleological end of employment through gallery representation, museum inclusion and occasionally (the rarest of the three) a position in higher education or as an academic scholar.
Below are some simple ways of figuring out if you are in an environment that prizes employment. I believe the minor league meets all of these criteria with flying colors:
1. A permanent state of congeniality in participants’ social interactions. Seen any public flame wars recently between successful net artists? I haven’t. The minor league certainly has occasional trolling, but this is primarily done by those with the least to lose or those who are desperately trying to maintain relevance (there are also those who have made a brand of being ‘bad boys’ but this is a much rarer and possibly less sincere use of drama). As I mentioned, the internet is the formal space the minor league exists in, though its participants inhabit other social realms as well. There are plenty of successful minor league artists feuding with each other through IRL whispers, just as there are many inner-office dramas elsewhere– but these things are typically not made public out of respect for the ‘professionality’ of Web 2.0 platforms as a market-competitive space.
2. The repetition of participant’s names as a self-branding device for advancement in a job market. In nationwide corporate conferences this is done through sticky name tags, in the nationwide minor league this is embodied in tagged Facebook photos, group show exhibition cards where 80% of the visual space is dedicated to a list of names and participant’s using their names as the locations of their website URLs. Names are very important in careers that rely on distinguishing a brand of production.
3. An emphasis on accomplishments within an environment as a marker of one’s position relative to its hierarchy. See: every minor league artist’s CV available for download.
4. A schedule of routine labor. You can’t skip a week of work in a retail job and expect to remain employed. You can’t fail to periodically release a new project and still expect to advance in the minor league. What writers like Geert Lovink have noticed is the way in which Web 2.0 platforms mandate constant social engagement at the threat of ostracism and disconnection. The minor league’s obsession with ‘the new’ may alternately be viewed as a near-religious devotion to the validity of routine production. What is ‘new’ allows the surveillance of other participants’ current state of artistic being. For this, the massive viewership of the minor league is, on an individual basis, an attempt to understand one’s own position in its hierarchy of accomplishment. By not seeing the most recent work of one’s peers, an artist fails to understand their relation to the minor league at large.
5. Belief in the pedigree of an educational background as a necessary measure of one’s competence. Few American jobs that don’t necessitate manual labor will employ those who don’t have a degree in higher education. The minor league is an art school-educated group of people by and large. If the minor league was not the space of hypothetical employment I describe, it could potentially serve as a MAJOR threat to the structure of art pedagogy. There are hundreds of ambitious students currently in art school active in the minor league. If only a handful believed in the internet as a platform for discussion, critique and educational studies they would find no reason to return to SAIC, Cooper Union or CCA. This is not the case and I can think of no successful online schools of conceptual internet art.
Re: your final paragraph,
I’m going to go out on a not-so-daring po-mo limb here and say that There Is No Such Thing As Objective Journalism. I don’t attempt to be anything but subjective. With that said, I think there are a number of ways one can accept the universal nature of subjectivity in contemporary art writing. I believe it is the responsibility of contemporary art writers to provide informed analyses of the environments they take interest in while making their political/historical/conceptual/aesthetic tastes transparent for those reading their material. I strongly believe in the Victor Burgin-inspired idea that there is no art (or writing about it) that escapes political implication. The politics I prescribe to are influenced by anarcho-syndicalism and the pluralist networks of affinity that way of thinking advocates. There is no impulse among contemporary internet art media nor its participants to discuss the minor league in detail. Your description of this analytic impulse as being a universal one to all aspects of culture is simply not the case here.
What I’m truly “longing for” is an online art environment significantly more diverse than the one I currently inhabit. One intention of this essay was to site the lack discourse regarding intention and political belief among minor league participants as a way of comfortably totalizing their diverse efforts as synonymous, though this critique of hegemony can easily extend to a conversation of the lower number of women making internet art compared to males, the near-total absence of black internet artists, or other ways this environment has been socially codified into a single block. By diversity I mean a wide range of all variables for artistic production; a diversity of genders, a diversity of intentions, a diversity of written expression, a diversity of visual methods, and on. I sincerely don’t want critical orthodoxy to govern internet art because I don’t want a universalism of any kind.
Brad,
I never asked for or expected objectivity, but I did expect self-awareness on your part. You exist within all of the structures that you purport to critique. There is no environment that does not prize employment. There is no environment of group interaction on any scale that does not maintain a congeniality in its highly public interactions. And while the “Minor League” will continue to enroll in art-schools (yourself and myself included), I don’t think you’ll disagree with me that a growing number of these students will find the Internet “as a platform for discussion, critique and educational studies.” Case in point: this essay and the wealth of critical and engaging comments it has created. Thank you for that.
My only real concern remains that you dismiss the current “‘utopian’-Minor League” for its lack of criticality, its recognizability as a facet of capitalism. Essentially its weakness as a movement without any guiding socio-political stance. But the anarcho-syndicalist utopia that you propose, leads a disorganized movement into territory it does not belong in. The “Minor League” is not an avant garde (are we not operating under the assumption that there will never be another one?); and my what previous comment tried to grasp at was that we should celebrate the movement for what it is, not revise it into what it isn’t.
Micah,
Thank you for your response.
Re: 1, I think you may have missed the paragraph after the quote you included? It addresses the criticisms you have.
“It is not out of academic elitism that I bemoan the absence of critical voices for internet art– in fact, it’s the complete opposite. I accept the idea that an aesthetic consensus is as valuable as an intellectual one. I also value the decentralized network of influence that Web 2.0 artists have created as a profoundly egalitarian step forward in artists’ self-organization. But as a true proponent of pluralism, I believe there must be a wide-ranging and equally competing number of influences for our perception of work created in the minor league– to include the diversification of blogs and fostering of other modes of community-driven discourse. By its definition, pluralism is a tendency that runs contrary to all forms of monopolization– even that of the democratic majority. A minor league wholly determined by the reblogs of peers or the fleeting mention in only two viable media sources is no less tyrannical than a Greenbergian state of critical omnipotence.”
Re: 2a
I don’t fully understand what you are disagreeing with in this comment, but let me try to clarify what I intended to say about the subjects that you raise. First, there is the idea mentioned that internet artists are self-serving. This is true, but it doesn’t speak to what I was specifying as their intention. The aspect of the self that is being served in the minor league is an ambition to become part of the art market at large. This is opposite of the idea that internet artists are attempting to create an open source community of intellectual property, or that identity has become irrelevant in a decentralized network of communication. These property-less and identity-less ways of thinking would be alternatives to how the minor league operates. I personally endorse the idea of art as a digital ‘common’, but the point of this essay was to spell out how such crypto-anarchism is not the political-conceptual goal of my online peers. I hope it was apparent that my message was not “stay in your basement and don’t show your art to anyone”. I obviously believe the internet is an efficient and potentially positive thing for artists. What I’m interested in are the methods and ideologies that comprise artists’ internet use. I suggest the ideology of the minor league is ultimately a capitalist one.
Regarding your distinction between ‘real’ and ‘idea’ markets, my intention was to conflate these two as being part of one overall economy. The minor league is a tactical union of promotion in dialogue with galleries and museums– it is by no means separate. What methods and digital spaces of existence it inhabits are merely separate means to the same end as a career-seeking artist without a Tumblr account.
I disagree with your suggestion that the art market is able to consume all modes of authentic production. We all know most transgressive forms of artistic expression have been reified by the art market, Hot Topic or some other company. Maybe that widespread history is why you feel so helpless to it. The problem with these once-transgressive-turned-neutered artworks is that they sought to transgress the cultural norms of the time in which they existed. Because culture is constantly adapting it is inevitable that what was once provoking can later be turned Pop. But while culture may be in flux, the tenets of capitalism are not. Capitalism is structured by the sale of goods between separate parties. This means that what cannot be sold or pinned down to a specified owner cannot be distributed through capitalism. Things that are incapable of meeting these criteria fit the definition of a ‘common’, as Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt describe it. A common is a mutually produced resource made available to all. It is not valued according to its existence as property, but for its functional use. For example, language is a common that is only as valuable as its ability to be practiced by users. A continuously evolving meme can also be considered an example of a common: it is without a known author and exists outside of a form that may be translated as property. You can sell an I Can Haz Cheezburger sweatshirt, but the idea of someone selling the I Can Haz Cheezburger meme as a concept would be impossible and pointless. I don’t wish to universally impose this conception of production, property and social engagement on everyone making art– but I would like to see it become a viable alternative to the present option. I would like to help promote a space where art exists as something beyond one’s property.
Re: 2b
The idea that artists are empowered by the internet because they are now able to sell their works to collectors instead of selling their works through dealers (who would later sell that work to collectors) doesn’t seem very revolutionary or particularly new. Artists have long sold works directly to collectors out of their studios– the internet didn’t invent that possibility. These days, I would shy away from totalizing statements like “the internet empowers artists”. The internet is a place for tactics, but does not inherently ‘free’ people. In fact, there are many writers focused on the ways in which the protocols of the internet and its popular applications actually limit and destabilize autonomy. I think that some uses of the internet can empower artists towards various goals, but I believe it’s more important to ask what exactly they are being empowered to do and why they are doing it.
Thanks for clearing things up!
You mention some authors who are writing about how the internet is destabilizing autonomy – could you give me some names ???? I would be much obliged, and thanks for your response, much valued!
The Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri writing I mentioned is from ‘Commonwealth’.
If you’re looking for people critical of the internet in the way it structures interaction I would check out Alex Galloway’s writing, especially ‘Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization’. Geert Lovink also writes about this idea in a much less difficult style than Galloway. One my favorite essays I’ve read recently about this subject was Langdon Winner’s ‘Do Artifacts Have Politics?’. The classic example of writing about the constrictions of modes of communication influencing content is Marshall McLuhan’s ‘The Medium is The Message’. I have only read bits of her writing, but Eva Illouz is also interested in this subject. Jaron Lanvier is a computer scientist-turned-digital skeptic whose book ‘You Are Not A Gadget’ might be worth checking out. My least favorite of writers interested in this subject is Nicholas Carr, who is worth mentioning but probably not worth reading.
Of the participants I know from the recent BYOB, I doubt that their main reason for attending had anything to do with the fact that the space was a commercial gallery. You don’t go for the name on the wall, you go for the wall, and you go for the people. Communication online isn’t perfect, and often times a conversation in person can provide much more context. Plus, meeting in person is a good way to strengthen friendships and see “celebrities.” How could you not be jealous upon hearing that Rozendaal, Jeremy Bailey, Ryder Ripps and Tom Moody, to name a few people, were all going to be packed in the same room for a few hours, and that they’re all armed with projectors?
I think you are making a huge mistake in claiming that such communities comprised of diverse practices and philosophies are in “error.” The strength that such community presents is it challenges the participating artists with critique that might not have stated if working among very similar peers. If an online community has broad interests and only occasionally the members make work that transcends the group’s personal biases, the art is better because it escapes the necessity of the context of a statement, manifesto or treatise. It is much harder to produce images that are broadly appealing, and so participation in such a conversation shows bravery on the part of the artist.
The diverse community is also a better reflection of society, and so struggling with context-free production is struggling with expression in greater society, and with the present. Culture has moved on past an interest in art for the most part; investigating methods to rejoin culture and art could be seen as radical. The institutional art world continues to reward those who endorse its internal actions, however, as it pigeonholes itself into becoming just another subculture. Art movements depended on a cultural distribution model that does not exist any more, so stop anticipating them. You call art from the varied, open and talkative net community “appealing to the lowest common denominator.” I call it reflective of contemporary existence.
Regarding what you see as an absence of critical discourse, you underestimate young artists when you claim that they confuse “content and carrier.” What makes treating the Internet as a source of content rather than as only a platform an illegitimate gesture? The Internet has its own customs, manners of speech, and methods of preservation and distribution. The contemporary Internet merely lacks the transparency of content migration that accrues over time. Your expectations are for clear citation in expected locations and easily observed popularity; this comes from a background of monolithic pop culture, and it is a tendency one must fight. As most of the discussion is happening right now in this historical moment, most of the recording and investigation into this phase of internet art hasn’t happened yet. That said, many of the participants are young and are still finding their voices as well, and when they do speak it is often within the wider, not-necessarily-arts-only online community. Internal visibility is desirable, sure, but perhaps it’s better for internet artists to explore broader press outlets than the currently insular academic art world.
Sometimes writing gets passed around that is separate from the stream; you give the example of Post Internet as the future record of this period, whom I now call out for cowardice in avoiding entering the discussion. McHugh was not interested in participating, as was evidenced by his initial anonymity, lack of contact information, and lack of comments. His approach was broadcast-only and written in a purely academic style, not taking into account in any way the interests or makeup of his audience. This should be noted as very anti-Internet behavior. It should also be noted that he was sponsored by an institutional grant for this.
You make the claim that the “minor leagues” will splinter, either by self-reorganization due to irreconcilable differences or by eventual outside curation. I have no doubt that is a potential endgame (please see the rest of contemporary art for reference), but to encourage this division to a community that does not seek it, and in fact thrives in its strangeness, seems–frankly–divisive. If diversity exists in the exchange of ideas right now, as your arguments seem to imply, take advantage of it! Find new ways to enter and enhance the critique, rather than providing artists with advice on how to squeeze their practice out of a dialogue with other artists and into the institutional model. By maintaining a conversation in the face of economic adversity and the difficulty of limited commonalities, we work toward an art more relevant to the whole of society.
Find & Replace:
change all “minor league” to “special olympics”
http://doir.ir/byob.gif
http://www.themanningcompany.com/troemel.html
Reading this essay for useful information was like trying to chew through a basketball made of granite to get to a pea-sized morsel of cream filling.
If net art develops compelling critical voices I hope its practitioners ignore the Met’s visitor brochures penned by William H. Gass on an especially joyless day (displayed above, signed by Troemel) in favor of a glitter .gif by Shel Silverstein.
That being said, I think many of your points and arguments were incorrect.
Good reply, Duncan Alexander, and thanks to Rafaël Rozendaal for being willing to put together a group of artists who wouldn’t have selected to show with each in a million years (as is clear from the omissions in Troemel’s essay). I avoided “critiquing” the show on my blog because I was one of the “beamers” but this didn’t deter Troemel, who feigns objectivity in this essay but neglects to mention that he participated in the show under his faux crowdsourcing alias “Joyce Jordan.” I actually liked the Jordan piece pretty much (if it was the ceiling piece I think it was) but can confirm that Brad stuck to his clique during the brief time I saw him in the space. It was a fun evening, with much great work but Troemel once again manages to suck all the joy out of the proceedings with his tired Marxist complaints about the gallery system.
Hi Tom.
I think it necessary to assert that Brad didn’t “critique”, review, or cover BYOB, but merely used it as a topical lens through which to focus on more abstract observations.
Also, generally any writing found on this blog is and likely will be written from a highly subjective standpoint, though I encourage included writers to undergird their essays with research and combat directly personal or ad hominem motivations.
“I think it necessary to assert that Brad didn’t “critique”, review, or cover BYOB, but merely used it as a topical lens through which to focus on more abstract observations.”
Oh come on Karen. “More abstract observations?”. This inflates the value of this essay and you know it. Troemel has produced an essay responding to the gallery system with very little experience within it and it shows. This garbage about the two tiered system is a ridiculous simplification of the motivations of artists and anyone who’s been out of art school for more than a minute knows it. Kudos to Troemel for doggedly engaging the issues, but some of these ideas need further consideration. Ideally an editor would point this out.
Now, as Tom mentions, Troemel wrote an essay about a show he was in. Whether or not he critiques the artists themselves the author has a journalistic responsibility to disclose his affiliations. This blog failed to do that. Why not be professional about it and own up to the oversight?
Speaking to this, I hope it will not take the same length of time approving this comment as it has for others with contentious opinions. It isn’t that difficult to set up a comment section so that only anonymous commentors need approval.
This morning I read Ben Davis’ essay “Beyond the Art World,” a farewell letter of sorts as he leaves his position as associate editor on artnet.com, and I thought, “These points seem pretty obvious to me. What sort of person could he be writing this for?” And then I was like, “Oh yeah. Brad Troemel.”
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/beyond-the-art-world11-19-10.asp
Fuck, I’m gonna be too old to be a Web 2.0 artist on monday!
Nice essay.
Brad once again, http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v90/oatsuzn/fantasia.gif
and, http://cdn1.knowyourmeme.com/i/30403/original/YouMad.jpg
Never thought I would read someone slag off Marxian critique as an ossified, joyless relic of a bygone era and then appeal to objectivity[!] as the reason he “avoided ‘critiquing’” the event on his blog. I thought irony was supposed to be a “Web 2.0 artist” hobby horse….
far out
I’m not sure if anyone has noted this yet, but what I see in your remarks is that you seem to give a lot of attention to historical validation. Viz. “What a shame it would be, to see the efforts of hundreds of artists more equipped for communication than any generation before them, be forgotten because they never attempted to define themselves.” I guess you mean more than just being forgotten as an individual artist but also as a “movement”, or some works that would deserve to be remembered. The worst would be if any historical consciousness would disappear. Or would it? Art nowadays is still based on art historical consciousness (often as ironic reference or in-joke, which may need to peter out because it’s not funny any more). So maybe we are really entering some sort of post-historical art (how often has this been said?). Or maybe the artist will really be going underground and stuff like Younger Than Jesus is just a last desperate stand of the established gallery system (how likely?), which anyways isn’t really much older than a century (I guess). As are museums. And art as art-pour-l’art is just a bit older.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. But who knows where it’s all going anyway. So it becomes some kind of ethical decision on that is the best course of action. Like you I’d like to see more diversity in art, and the Interwebs at least allow (but not more) that, because materials costs can be a lot lower than painting, because most people have a lot of the equipment they’d use for art production on hand for personal use. If you can free up some time from earning your keep in an other way, you won’t need the gallery system. I mean, it may not be the most interesting move of certain people from an immaterial production to gallery-sellable objects. I’m not sure, because I’m not familiar with the latter of these people.
Concluding remarks… who still knows of the mail-art community of the seventies/eighties? The Neoists? And all those people producing fantastic little artists books, they’re still not throwing around a lot of weight in the commercial art world.
I’ll end my ramblings.
“Philostophers do not require projectors.
Projectors do not require Philostophers.”
–?
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lbzsgdxpQK1qaimtio1_500.gif
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lc380aRDzB1qaimtio1_400.png
Brad u a uncompelling martyr 4 zero
One initial question I had regard the “self-election” of a given artists into the major league is: how is this any different from the social structure that has already existed in the commercial gallery system? and then something along the lines of: does the lack of capital exchange on the internet automatically make it subservient to some kind of monetary eventuality?
In other words, just cuz it’s free and fun online does it become commercial and serious when put in IRL space?
The page that web2.0 artists should read in the Conceptual artists book might involve the proliferation of critical thinking from the artists mouth (which although helpful in retrospect might have been furthering the opaque readings of Conceptual art) but also should include the work. Although some artists were generally more prolific than others, constant (or a sustained) productivity should inform contemporary artists and thinkers. I think part of this work involves being connected with your peers through the available channels that we all inhabit (gchat, FB, tumblr). To work “through the minor-league” one might consider how this engagement continues to develop their thoughts. Another way can be a rigorous investigation of the materials of one’s work (as opposed to through their writing). Not to say that writing is not important, but acknowledging the lineage and growth of artist through the maturity of their work can also be a window into the solidifying of a critical stance (I think that is what Brad is suggesting that Kari, Oliver, and AIDS-3D are doing).
One way that I’ve been trying to articulate this emerging discourse and dialog is by talking with other artists, esp those that I wouldn’t normally have access too or direct association with (hat-tip to Tom Moody for suggesting that this IRL interaction might be crucial for artists working online). Through interviewing (another practice RR has used: http://www.onequestioninterview.com/), and participating in curatorial/organization acts, artists can also bolster/expand their critical rhetoric (something that I think Brad did well in his immaterial survey).
To discount the amazing amount of discourse that happens through comment threads and sustained offline activity that these two outlets provide does a great disservice to the supposed pluralism that’s been endorsed (not to mention some amazing listservs that are not included in this article). I always find powerful critique/thinking coming from a place of offering continued questions, as opposed to giving specific examples of “successes” and/or proven modes of branching out of a given community into the “major league.”
keep surfin dude! anyway, i love you all even if you guys sometimes get all worked up over pretty silly stuff, lol.
Brad,
I get a similar sense at this time, I know for a fact that galleries have their eyes on this thing, whatever it is, or at least open to suggestion from certain artists. Artists who do some stuff online. I’m pretty sure they’ve got no idea how to phrase it from their side, and “Minor League” artists don’t from their side either. It’s like each knows the other may have a different kind of value to the other, and even potentially to the trajectory of art, eventually, but they don’t know how. What I understand is that you may be suggesting we try to sort that out, with writing. Yet, there is much friction and resistance as evidenced in the comments here and elsewhere.
I wish people would stop bashing McHugh, he did something good, a chronicle. I actually find relief that it has no comments, I have thoughts of my own in response to his writing, and obviously they will occur at other junctures. I hate to have to say it again but often comments create this unnecessary drag to the buoyancy of ideas, solely for the fact they always have this shit-picking tone which is really un-enjoyable to read. I often can’t read it, even if I try, it’s like my eyes glaze over and I’m slipping toward the scroll wheel.
Amongst all the poo slinging in this thread, it would appear that the best thing is the post by Brian Droitcour, which points to the last paragraph of Ben Davis’ essay. It’s message applies not only to artists but to arts writers. It urges one to put down their fecal missles. Psychedelic music plays, change comes from beyond the system.
“The specter of the “art world” casts a mesmeric spell upon creative discussion, constantly absorbs new things into its professional orbit, and sets all kinds of bad examples because, of course, those who succeed are not necessarily the best artists, or writers — merely the best “art people.” But the “art world” is not some all-consuming “society of the spectacle” that has come to foreclose any possibility of critical thought or real artistic passion. It is, at most, a theater for people’s professional aspirations, a stage that serious artists pass through and then transcend. When you have learned its terms and then learned not to care about it, you have achieved a kind of state of grace, and that is where good art begins.”
BEN DAVIS was associate editor of Artnet Magazine, 2005-2010.
A state of grace is a place to be, surely. But perhaps one final thing, on transcendence, or access for all. I’ve always found the idea that art is better when relevant to everybody in society a little bit over zealous. Artists who said it drove their work, usually did so in a veiled attempt to access a broader market, like Warhol and Murakami, essentially both producers of merchandise. Great, and pure merchandise at times. But if the transcendence of the art world results in the creation of a production house or agency then i’m pretty sure it’s just as ok to stay where you are, as a player in an existing game.
The arrogance of the importance of art maintained by it’s proponents is incredible, and kind of funny. I can’t say I don’t feel it at times. We write the history book it seems to whisper. But in the end it’s like suggesting everyone must watch the golf, or everyone should be a Jehovah Witness. There is nothing wrong with art as a broader community unto itself, and there is also nothing wrong with people who don’t care about art. Art enriches a persons life, but so do many other pursuits.
Despite all the heavy concrete, there are no exclusions to the exhibitions and discourses of art other than those that they make for themselves, and currently, this is the biggest issue between what you termed Minor and Major artists and environments. I’m sure you know that. If they want access to the art gallery world, and to it’s history, then they will find it by learning how to position and phrase their work in a way that is less polarized than Minor and Major. New Media has for so long been plagued by incessantly pointing out how it is different, instead of coming to terms with how it is the same, that’s where the big bones are buried. That’s what my work’s been all about anyway.
Take it easy y’all. It’s summer in Australia and i’m off to the beach.
Post-script: If Minor artists don’t want access to the gallery setting, or to it’s history, then that’s fine as well. You may be right in acknowledging that at some point this will become a divide, but more likely it would appear that being a web 2.0 artist has a very broad range of aspirations tied up within it – ie: as you are aware, the problem comes from blanketing an otherwise disparate group of practices under the same umbrella and then wondering why they won’t fit.
“No one is paying attention to this except us.” <~~should be the definition of "the minor league"
[...] specifically discuss articles published by Brad Troemel and Karen Archey on Karen’s new art criticism and review site Bien-Pensant that respond to [...]
[...] bien-pensant — The Minor League It often takes much longer to gain a critical voice and the faculties necessary to begin feeling comfortable writing. The current period of internet art is marked by a lag in the number of people capable of starting a Tumblr (all) and the number of people who have studied the subjects necessary I think it necessary to assert that Brad didn't “critique” review or cover BYOB, but merely used it as a topical lens through which to focus on more abstract observations. [...]
[...] Paddy Johnson’s Art Fag City. Brad Troemel (who was actually a contributor to the show) wrote an essay for Karen Archey’s Bien-Pensant characterizing the community of netartists represented at [...]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sharon Butler and Jennifer Dalton. Jennifer Dalton said: very interesting/ MT @stephentruax How did I miss this analysis of artists using social media and the net to self-promote? http://bk.ly/xgj [...]
[...] my essay on Hyperallergic, July 2010, Ben Davis’ art v. social media, Aug 2010, Brad Troemel’s essay on ArtInfo, Dec 2010, Karen Archey’s op-ed at ArtInfo, Dec 2010, James Panero in The New Criterion, Dec [...]
[...] also slightly taking a cue from Brad Troemel and his much talked about essay The Minor League (posted orignially on Bien-Pensant, and now located on Karen Archey’s Image Consciousness [...]
The minor league.. Keen