[-empyre-] consumers and producers + à bientôt

["Joseph Nechvatal" <joseph_nechvatal@hotmail.com>]

Just two bantam comments:

I do think that Eryk Salvaggio has it right when stating "What strikes me 
about the value of the net is the possibility of becoming completely 
androgynous. I think net.androgyny would be the key liberating factor?." As 
new technologies, from interneted Virtual Reality to Artificially Aided 
Reproduction, are swiftly altering the range of the human subject, 
net.androgyny as a general art interest just might be able to help 
counter-media the usual repressive genital combat. As I discussed previously 
concerning what I call "algorithic hermaphornology", with viractuality the 
human subject may include itself in any number of heterogeneous identities 
within the plane of viractual consistency. In that sense, net.androgyny - or 
byte hermaphornology (as I prefer to think of it) - counters the hackneyed 
notion that we are restricted to our physically assigned genitals. How else 
to overcome our own blind spots and non-provisional temperaments while 
invigorating - rather than enervating ? critical reflection?

Mary, it is true that, as you say at times, "reworking is many times skipped 
for simple substitution" by art students ? and there is no doubt that the 
work of many young (and not so young) contemporary artists sometimes does 
consist of facile, affected and not infrequently unintentional repeats (read 
rip-offs). I guess this is understandable (though still pathetic) in that 
market interests often saturate the art world; hype tends to prevail over 
criticism today; and the academic repetitions of critical theory outweigh by 
far its enactment in the real world. However, the fact remains that the 
repetition of a given practice within a changed historical cultural context 
has a different meaning and reception. For me, the clear-cut question is 
whether (and how) young artists (or, hell, any artist who does not 
acknowledge - or worse - know their predecessors? accomplishments which they 
are repeating) bring about a reactivated avant-garde impulse with their 
pastiche redundancy. Sometimes they do acknowledge (and even pay homage) to 
their predecessors - and sometimes they only retrieve and present as their 
own some art (or commercial art) form in a visionless or nostalgic manner. 
Personally I am all for recycling disembodied signs, but there must be a 
complex amalgam attained which perverts the passive, consumerist reflex. My 
point is that we have to stay open to the liberating potential of breaking 
through linear history and someway arriving at Benjamin?s ?dialectical 
image?.

Happy Holidays to you both.

Telepresently Yours,
Joseph Nechvatal


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