Again these threads appear treacherous: I keep hopping between posts and
also the automatic listserf seems to get lost ever once in a while when
discussion moves back and forth. Who's working on the summarizing bot?
Old habits die hard. Why would you expect a sudden change in institutional
intelligence when new media come around, right Morgan? To me, to the
'institutional' habits belong as much the slowness of art institutions
discussed here, in understanding that information media go beyond your
average museum website, as for the rock-solid deconstructionistetc
worldview jargon that prevents some of the posts on this list to attain
just about anything as light and clear or sordid and smelly as a 'form', or
'image' maybe.
It seems the story of XDocumenta at large, this stunning lack of Form: as
an important and in a sense disruptive view on artistic postwar production
it delivers 1) _no_ exhibition (believe me i'm an eye witness to the thing
-- and of course there was some release in individual contributions and
even in lucky gatherings of works/events: areas like the Kelley-Oursler/100
days auditorium/Acconci-Koenig bookstore field of reference, where things
got going, or the Godard-Graham environment), 2) a book that's a much
better embodiement of the conceptual importance of these discourses, but 3)
no idea whatsoever of what information culture is going to be like.
XDocumenta is retrospective to the core. It's meant to be that way by its
organizers. Seen any contemporary culture, critical or revisionist? None.
New stuff, different practices? Website, Hybrid WorkSpace, discussions --
just name it and there's no anticipation/facilitation of a changing
economics of the symbolic artefact, or what you want. Some hints (Koolhaas,
Grimonprez), a lot of stints.
The problem is that although we might see a different cultural dynamic
coming up with information media, things don't achieve form in just a few
years. Or they do and look like old things or they look like nothing. Eg.
adaweb is just another 'institution', conceptualized from an institutional
mindset. Using new tools to achieve old goals and push old content. Online
publishing. There you go.
Jouke Kleerebezem Amsterdam
PS who also wrote in his notes to the <documenta><blast>list:
Too bad an art community doesn't invest. Thus it gets the
informationalization it deserves. Poor conceptualism by a
social-cultural-infognostical self acclaimed 'Net' avant-garde is heralded
at XDocumenta. Its worst piece of 'content', uninformed by any aesthetic,
is acted out at the 'Hybrid WorkSpace', on site a dark rathole of global
disinformation passing for mass media derive. Excuse me, let me throw up
some bandwith here. Inflated claims i don't even want to repeat. Read their
own stuff littering about <www.documenta.de/workspace>. And don't pass by
the interviews.
PPS "And do remember that half of the world has never made a telephone
call" (Susan George in a XDocumenta/WorkSpace - credit - interview)
PPPS for something entirely different (how would this work out in our
niche?): <www.bylines.org/bylines/bylines.nsf>
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